Before I ll die I have to do something
by shadow-walker12
Summary: The story starts after Being Human s second season closed with a cliffhanger. It was written as a "How may it go on in season 3" and it s my very own version and due to the point of writing it does not go along with the content as it was finally shown in the new season! I first created the story for the BeingFans forum and I took for it from promo shots what I could get.
1. Chapter 1

The lid of the coffin closed and Aidan heard the hard sound of shells of soil that were falling on the wooden surface above his face.

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

They really buried him!

Buried him like Suren. Were going to seal him in. Within the cool moisture of the ground and he could smell a mixture of old tissue that rose from the inlay of his prison and the intense smell of freshly broken chunks of earth.

Aidan suddenly felt panic rising. Like this it must be when a mortal was buried alive by accident! Closed in, hearing the earth covering the wooden box in which he was sealed in helpless. To know that he was going to die slowly when the air went off, the lungs start to fight for oxygen and he was to suffocate slowly. How much time would it need until suffocation? It was an agonizing death.

How long would he resist? How long would his immortal body withstand death? Withstand the narrowness of the box, withstand the panic and withstand before he went crazy? With enough time he would go from madness to stupor when resignation was to follow.

Between the muffled sounds of falling earth he heard the voices of the Elders who stood beside the open grave. Voices from far above. None did discuss the decision of Mother nor heard he any further comment by her.

I will probably die if this lasts long enough but you will have to live with the inevitable knowledge that it had been you who killed the only one who ever loved you. Who loved you so much that she failed to become the hard and soulless offspring you so dearly wanted. It is you who failed! Failed to regard your daughter as that what she was to become.

He had not failed to pay respect to his son.

_You have become a man to be proud of_ he had currently told to Henry.

The memory of him hanging on that damn hook like meat in a slaughter house, the view into his tormented face, nearly constricted his throat and let a roar rising that echoed in the narrow box. If I ever will get out of this prison the traitorous bastards who did that to him will pay for...whether Henry will be alive or not.

They all will pay the price.

Suren had paid for what she had done to Henry. Not out of his hands, but by those of her mother. I beg, he would have had the chance to seek revenge one day for the suffering she sent him through. Her cruelness was equal to that of Mother but by the lack of hardness that finally broke her neck.

Tigers care for their kids but they kill the weak ones. Mother. She had killed the weak one to proof her hardness and ruthlessness. Mother had born her mortal child, had gifted her with life, than with immortality to rise her as her equal. She had lived throughout the centuries to see her growing up in every way, then falter and finally fall. There had been hope and hope dies last even with the not flawless and Suren had her patience until finally she grew tired of even her own flesh and blood.

Could she ever really love?

No.

The smell grew stronger when the last shovels of earth had fallen on the coffin and the thud of a shovel on the surface of the grave indicated that they were flattening the ground above.

Let grow grass over it.

Aidan speculated if they would place a gravestone on it like it had been done with Suren´s grave were she was buried eight decades. Not buried to kill her but to broke her very willing. Vampires won´t die by burials but their mind would grow weak and become shapeable...

He didn´t want to lose his very willing.

The last sounds faded away. The silence grew and there were no further sounds when the voices and the bodies belonging to them disappeared. A silence so strong he began to feel deaf. Never before had he experienced such silence.

Silence.

Silence can drive you mad.

Was this one of the principles to break his will? Unbearable silence until you start to talk to yourself in the urge to hear anything and your mind is going to split, open to anyone to insinuate their will to him.

His hands and his wrists start to hurt, then grew numb and became pins and needles, when he tried to move them within his shackles. Aidan let out a moan when prickling changed into hurt. This would be the worst thing that they had tied him with his hands on the back and he had no space to turn around himself inside his prison. How should he stand that any time? Even within the short time since they had sealed him in it became nearly unbearable. What did that mean to long time periods or would his hands grow numb, then necrotize and finally drop away like parts of a shrunken mummy?

Suren had been like a shrunken mummy when he had brought her into the cellar under the Halloway Hotel, were willing donors waited for the vampires to be grated with an unusual sexual experience in exchange.

Who would bring him in when they finally decided to free him from his underground prison?

Aidan closed his eyes and the silence went into his narrow prison like the pits of hell. Once he had thought about if down in the ground he would at least hear the whispering sounds of all these little creeping creatures that made the soil their home by nature.

Moisture crept with slowly cold fingers into his limbs, exchanged the burning tingle with cold numbness. His slowing breath was lying over his face like a foggy sheet. His mind went back to his son he had so gone to lengths for not too long ago.

The cellar became empty when the members of the self instructed penal lead by Mother left the sticky dust filled hall. Distinct smell of dried blood and a light touch of slowly rotting flesh filled Henry´s nostrils. Blood that wasn´t his own and the smell mixed with that which emanated from his own body.

His chin was sunken onto his chest and his body tried to shut off from the excruciating pain that was permanently running through his body from back to sternum. By luck the hook had missed his wind-pipe so he could breath at least. And had been able to splutter an nearly inaudible excuse when Aidan found him hanging and all the well intended plans had failed when the guardians had caught him.

He had come into the cellar after he had bound the red scarf around a nearby tree trunk to lure Aidan the right way. Mother had her slumbering place, her hide away here in this abandoned house out in the woods.

He had his doubts when Aidan told him what in details he was going to do.

Aidan was angry, shocked and disgusted when Mother simply staked her daughter like a turn out badly puppy. One step more to force the decision on him that it became time to finally get rid of her and therefore all of them set free from her royal suppression. She had reigned since centuries, he didn´t know exactly for how long, since he lived since 257 years. But what he had seen for almost more than a century it turned out now to be enough of royal hardness, brutality and contempt.

With her none of them would ever be free the way he wanted.

Not only vampire politics but a kind of suppression that went deep down to the base of their souls. The last years she became a nightmare.

He and Henry, they wanted so much to be free of all of it. Henry had taken up the leadership over the orphans when they´d asked him for. And he, Aidan had betrayed their trust into Henry when Suren had forced the decision on him whether for them or for Henry.

That had been unfair!

He had never hold any resentment against them, those who simply wanted to be free from all political suppression, same like him. Free from politics, any intrigues and the treachery of some of the members of the Council.

Maybe it had all be in the plans of Suren, initiated by her Mother, to demonstrate him by this way what the Royals thought about all those vampires who dared to step out of the line. And he was definitely stepping outside when he tried to life as a _vegetarian_. Drinking from the blood bank, from the bag, not taking his fill in the blood damp atmosphere of Halloway Hotel where control slipped away so easily when he was drinking.

He was somewhat far away from the controls Henry maintained so well when he took his fill while having sex with willing donors.

What if they had cut away him from his sources to turn his mind? When _not_ the hospital itself grew suspicious about the loss of transfusion material and installed enforced security for the blood bank? Who in the clinic was connected to the Vampire Council? He couldn´t remind any. But that doesn´t matter anymore.

If all grow worse he was going to drive mad and die anyway.

_He´s weak and he´s suffering and he´ll die anyway_

The words sprang to his mind when he had once turned Henry and had urged him to drink to complete the changes in his body.

He would become as weak as Suren when only his imprisonment would last long enough. And Henry, his Henry, wouldn´t be able to come to his help. He himself needed to be set free.

Aidan swallowed hard, choked, when his throat went suddenly dry like sand in a desert.

Was it sheer panic or a more physical lack of liquid? He tried to distract himself from his thoughts and more to concentrate on the possible sounds within the soil.

But there were none.

Silence was so strong and thick like walls of rock even when he was buried under shells of soil and not solid rock like a Pharaoh in a pyramid. He listened to the slow beats of his immortal heart and with each beat he knew what the word eternity really tended to mean.

Claustrophobia.

The word sprang to his mind with the cynicism of the medical educated man. Henry was once a medic. Friendly, caring, always seeking to do the best for his patients. Even under the nearly impossible conditions in a military field hospital. Took even his time to sit beside his bed and read a book for him aloud when he had been to weak to do for himself.

For heaven´s sake Aidan didn´t tend to fall prey to claustrophobia.

Claustrophobia didn´t become a problem for Henry when Mother came back into the cellar after the burial. He had lot of space around him.

She was followed by her guardians and some of the Council members. He heard her approaching and suddenly her steps stopped dead beside him. The pain in his chest nearly knocked him unconscious every few seconds and he barely could lift his head now, when his tearing eyes saw the tips of her shoes.

"Uh, Henry Durham! Tilt his head down in front of his queen…", she spat. "Like it belongs to a servant! Or don´t you dare to look into my eyes ´cause of your traitorous behavior?"

He felt her hand, her nails, dig into his chin and lifting his head so far, he could look into her eyes what needed only a little movement because of his position.

When his eyesight cleared a little bit Henry saw strong contempt in her look. He was drifting on the edge of consciousness and any little movement let rise new pain in his whole body. It was different but in the other way equal in intensity to that he had suffered during and after skinning. He fought for breath and hissed with pain, when his head moved and the pierced muscles tore in his chest. A thick clot of blood stuck on his sternum and his face was swollen with bruises, his bottom lip split where a fist had hit..

Mother stared into his face and a smile crept into her face when she puckered her lips in a fake of pity.

"You´re thirsty my _friend_, aren´t you?! Uh, you will be so much more…" Her arm rose and indicated those who were hanging around him like empty shells of a human being. Some dead, some dying and the less making any sound anymore. Henry couldn´t turn his head to follow her hand but he could smell the dried corpses, the distinct smell of decay: blood and bodies.

Any time later he would be going to join them.

How could she stand the stench of death around her when she went to sleep. Compromising her own lair. He estimated her to maybe enjoy it instead of loathing it.

The perfume of her victory.

Ending up like this now he had suffered by the hands of her daughter Suren for nothing else but to be alive for what Mother hold in back for him. Once he had thought that as a vampire he would take matters in his own hands when it comes to dying or that time would kill him.

He let out a deep moan.

Mother turned over to the body that was hanging next to him, stretched her hand to one of the guardians and he put a knife into her hand. She grinned, and with a fast movement she slit open the man from chin to groin. The victim cried out loud when blood shot in a gush to the ground, more black and thicker than normal, looking more like black jelly.

"What a waste of substance! But he isn´t worth it!"

Like by magic there was a wooden stake in her hand and she drove it into the vampire´s heart. With shock Henry saw him dissolve into glittering ashes and end up in a pile of grey dust on the ground beneath the now empty hook.

Then she turned back to him.

"A royal should show mercy!" Her smile was cold as ice.

Her hand rose and with the bloody tip of the stake she caressed his temple with the softness of a lover. Her face was within spitting distance, but his mouth was dried out. She seemed to know this like everything in general she seemed to know, especially when it came to torture.

But she had been Suren´s mother. She had taught her very daughter the techniques of torture long before any of them went to life.

"But you, my _friend_…", her voice dripped with a mixture of pity and contempt when she accentuated the word friend; "…won´t die so fast! I will let you live as long as I won´t grow tired of your pitiable sight. All your cleverness and your treachery together with Aidan won´t pay off!"

"I will…die be…before you`ll…ha…a…ve time…to enjoy me…as…your exhibit!" , Henry choked under his breath interrupted by waves of pain that fired through his chest.

"Uh, you will be pretty wrong!" She turned around to Atlee, the Amish guy with the golden red hair.

"I order you to feed him with small amounts of blood, enough to keep him alive as long as I will endure him for my personal satisfaction! I won´t get loose my precious number one enjoyment. So be aware with what you´ll feed him: Enough to keep him alive but not such an amount to heal or strengthen him! You´re responsible for it at all points!"

Atlee nodded respectfully.

When Mother turned away from Henry and was followed by her subordinates, left him hanging for eternity like she promised, Atlee faked a few things he seemingly had still to do in the cellar to arrange her will.

The door fell shut behind them and Atlee was alone with the victims of Mothers vengeance or royal penalty.

Henry´s head was sunken on his chest and his eyes closed with excruciating pain. He could smell and hear the other…living…vampire, heard him stepping through the straw that was spread out under the victims.

His steps came nearer.

A hand touched his temple carefully and went deeper until it reached his chin, cupped it.

"Can you hear me, Henry?" His breath stroked over Henry´s face when Atlee had risen his own head a little bit so he could look into Henry´s painful eyes.

Henry saw his condition as a reflection in Atlee´s face when the other´s face contorted with grief. Atlee always had been a well minded under the vampires, far away from the brutality of the Amish who preferred the so called old way. A brutality so opposite to the rules of the Amish known in general.

"Henry! You hear me?", he tried again.

A moan was what he got as an answer.

"Okay! Listen, Henry… I´ll do what mother ordered to obey her will. Feed you with blood to keep you alive…"

"Be…better…stake me! Ca…can´t stand…an…more!" Henry whispered with last strength. His eyes fell shut and he let out a row of moans, now that they were alone. Without anybody to listen and…enjoy it.

"Stake me!..._Please_!" Henry choked. The _please_ so tortured it shot a hot flame through Atlee´s immortal heart. His eyes bled black when he fixed the Amish. His plea so urgently, so weak.

"Please, Henry! Don´t beg me for this! You have to live! For Aidan! He didn´t save your life from that offspring Suren to have you die now!" , he argued. His voice low enough that no one outside could hear them.

"They…gonna…kill me!" Atlee understood he meant earlier or later. Mother hadn´t to be mistaken in her will. She would kill him in future time. Any point she would determine. She had made him her prey, her toy.

Like she had made all of them her toys.

Time to finally finish this!

"…kill me…" Henry repeated in a hushed and bleakly voice.

"No! I won´t!" Atlee sounded determined. "I´ll feed you with blood, but with more than she means. Enough to keep you alive and slowly heal you…enough to enable you to free Aidan! I´ll help you both! Aidan is not a friend of mine but I respect him and I for myself am finally tired of what the leaders are doing to the vampires all over the time."

He looked over the crumbled hanging body and couldn´t do a thing to soften Henry´s torment like placing a stool under his feet because that would be visible. He couldn´t simply free him from the hook. Not before Henry would have got such an amount of blood that he could be brought out from here. An escape would only be possible in one step, after a preparation that took time. Atlee could guess very well what he was going to expose Henry to.

"You have to be very strong, Henry…I´m so sorry! You have to cling to your very life with your very will! Don´t even dare to give up!"

"You…can…I…not know." Henry uttered senseless words. He moaned and his whole body seemed to tremble, initiated by inner spasms. His eyes closed with a half choked cry when a wave of pain rolled over him.

Atlee knew that Henry´s body was short before going into shock state and he couldn´t do a thing to prevent it.

I don´t want to lose you…oh dear God!, he thought.

Henry´s fists clenched and his whole body began to shake like in shivering fits. He fought for breath and Atlee closed his arms around his helpless figure, trying to stabilize him in his agony.

"I will bring you blood…will bring you blood, Henry! Hold on! This will end soon and I´ll get you free for heaven´s sake!"

After a while the trembling softened then stopped and Henry´s body went limb when he closed his eyes and drifted into unconsciousness. Atlee let out a harsh breath and let loose the body in his arms. He lent back and stroked his hair away from his forehead. It was sweaty.

Atlee looked around the cellar, his hearing so much better like that of humans. No one was within hearing or the less visual range. He shot a view to Henry, found him still unconscious and carefully he opened the remains of the ruined shirt, peeled them back and bared the skin where the hook poked out of the sternum.

The view itself was kind of agonizing.

So much reminding of a half cut cattle in a slaughterhouse.

Blood soaked out of the large sized wound which wasn´t going to close because of the immense loss of blood Henry had suffered. It ran down in thin rivulets and drained away in his jeans.

You will be glad for every second you stay unconscious, my friend…, he thought. Don´t dare to think about what it had been the moment that damn hook went through your back and chest…

A cold shiver shook Atlee down to the inner core. He swallowed hard, turned away and left the cellar to get some blood.

When he arrived at the blood depot, stored in a large size fridge, an all aware guardian sat beside. Mother had made her preventions that all but nothing else as she had ordered would be done.

He would have to look for outer sources to complete his own plans for Henry.

And for Aidan.

If Aidan would have to stay grounded for a longer time, what meant at least a week, relating to Aidan´s feeding habits, he would need additional blood for a first feed of Aidan.

With a stone cold face he took out a bag of blood and left the small chamber. The guardian shot him a view then leaned back in his chair.

Atlee went back to the cellar, slipped into the dusty air of the cellar. To call it a prison will fit better, he thought when he arrived beside Henry´s limb body.

"Henry! You awake? C´mon…Essenszeit…" He dared to touch Henry´s temple again, waited for n reaction. It took half an eternity until Henry let out a moan. His lids opened, small slits over black pools and his mouth opened.

He could smell the blood and his body cringed with desire and despair inducing a new wave of pain. He so urgently needed the blood but the pain nearly tilted again his weak consciousness. Atlee placed himself beside Henry, cupped his chin with one hand and shoved the small tube of the bag between his lips.

"Drink, Henry…please…", he urged.

Henry´s eyes widened with fear.

"Gua…guard. When…come. In." Henry choked and his face contorted with pain. Every movement set free a hell of pain.

"Der is a dudd, awwer ar dud nischt…"Atlee commented in his Amish dialect with a smile. He was certain Henry did not understand the sentence but that doesn´t matter. The guard in front of the cellar was the smallest problem.

"Don´t be afraid! He is a mortal. No problem for me if he makes trouble. Now: Drink, Henry…!" he explained to him.

Henry begun to suck up the thick liquid and the taste of the blood threatened to overwhelm him. The bag was empty in a few moments as fast as the slim tube could deliver.

"Okay, I´ll get you more. Anyway! Don´t worry…" Atlee promised.

"Hu…hung…ry. Gim…" Henry choked and a coughing fit started a new wave of unbearable pain in his chest when the few words were forced out of his dry throat.

Atlee stood beside him helpless.

The fact that Henry once was tied up when they caught him like a mouse in a trap was changed now, not for his benefit, into loose hanging arms that clung to his side. His captors knew all too well that he was too weak to move his hands nor his arms, neither to do anything nor to free himself. It simply was an intensifying of torment, demonstrating him his absolute helplessness up to the final point.

When Suren had been an experienced tormentor, her mother had been her grim teacher.

"Hun…GRY!" His arms were swinging in a helpless attempt to fix for his throat and his chest but the only result was that his whole body began to swing back and forth. He cried out and Atlee rushed to his side, caught his body and tried to stabilize him.

"Ssschh…don´t do that! Be quite, Henry…calm down…I got you…be calm…Oh my dear God!"

_Calmez toi! Calmez toi…,_ he had once tried to calm down the fearful upset French soldier in the makeshift military field hospital back in France in 1918 when he meant to verify Aidan for the monster he really became a day later. The next day, during sunrise, when he came into Aidan´s compartment with an improved wooden stake, made from a chair, trying to stake _Le vampire, le Monstre_.

Henry had taken him for a soldier whose fever and feverish nightmares had driven him mad. Never believed in vampires as real creatures, the less that they could live and move during daylight. But he had been so bitterly wrong. Not so the poor soldier. That damn stake went right into his belly, when Henry had tried to wrung it out of the man´s hands. Aidan had risen from the field bed, his hands clinging to the stake and his terrible wound, cupping the blood like by a pot.

Drinking!

_I won´t let you die, Henry_…, Aidan had whispered into his ear that was banging with the beats of his struggling heart that fought to pump the blood through his deadly wounded body.

Aidan had saved him.

Had changed him into the very being he was now.

Aidan.

He had smelled the soil from the grave onto Atlee, the fine dust of earth that even heavy and moist clay gave away when you dig it up. Grave! They had…buried him! Buried like Suren eighty years ago! He knew the smell of that clay with the slight touch of decay underneath.

"_Ai…dan_!" he cried out.

A hand was laid onto his sore lips and Atlee hold him tight. The smell of blood was harsh in his nostrils and he could practically smell the pain in Henry.

His body gave off all that intense smell of blood, sweat, hunger, adrenalin and…

…strongest of all: pure fear.

"Ssschh! Shut up Henry! Don´t give them the satisfaction of having you crying here for your dear friend!" he whispered in a hushed voice. "I promised you that I`ll help you both!" His hand stroked the ruined temple of that miserable vampire who from all of them, deserved such a fate to the fewest.

He knew Henry very well, knew that he had led the orphan vampires and was a faithful son and companion to Aidan. He had risked his life when he faked the attack onto Aidan, accompanied by two other vampires who should assist him in the assault. They had not been to be trusted to. Aidan had stabbed him into the belly to testify that Henry said the truth when he came back that night and claimed the attack failing.

Everybody in the large hall had seen his bleeding wound. Mother too.

Aidan would do everything to save his son. Same with Henry when it comes to Aidan.

Henrys lips moved and Atlee listened carefully. His voice nearly inaudible. His words more a whiff of a voice, so weak.

"What? What´s up?"

"Thirst! Gi…gimme…water!", Henry pressed out.

"Wasser? Nur Narre dringe Wasser wo´scht da Wijn isch…" Atlee smiled. "Aber seis dro…."*(*_Water?_ _Only fools drink water when there´s wine…But so be it_) He looked for a pot, found none inside the cellar and went off to bring in one, filled with water. To fake the fact that it was for the captive he nibbled from it himself.

The guard looked somewhat suspicious.

"Guarding my special captive makes thirsty!" he claimed with a grin.

"You´re right…"mumbled the human and sank back.

The devil knows what he is doing in there, he thought. But that´s none of my business…

"Kinner un Narre saaget de Waahret…*"(* _Children and fools are telling the truth_), Atlee grumbled and walked inside again. He hoped that the water would tilt at least a little of Henry´s despair.

He was quite sure that he would have to go forward as fast as possible. For Henry. And for his own mental health.

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

He brought the mug at Henry´s lips and he began to swallow hard and urgently. His hands trembled and he snarled, when he couldn´t reach for the mug.

"Ischt guud…bischt tscheid, awwer dar Schnickelfritz do isch rutsching afore me, so I want…*" Atlee shook his head and smiled. (* it´s okay, you´re clever, but the troublemaker outside will squirm afore me if I want)

The black eyes managed an astonished view. For sure Henry didn´t understand any of the words spoken in the typical Dutch but it didn´t matter because the voice sounded confidential.

Henry´s hands relaxed beside his body and Atlee poured little sips into his mouth. He swallowed hard, let out a moan and very slowly the pot was emptied. Atlee shoved one hand under Henry´s chin, stabilizing his head when he drank.

"Okay…that´s fine…Not much, but it´ll help…I´ll bring you more tomorrow."

"No!...Now…!" Henry choked.

"No. I have to be careful that mother won´t get an idea what we´re going to do here…If she gets only a hint of it, all will go wrong. Me and you possibly dying or I´ll end up on a hook like you! Then I´ll be no help! For no one!" He tore out a cloth, dipped it into the water and carefully tried to clean his face a little bit.

Henry hissed with pain and Atlee stopped.

"Okay. You have to be very strong until tomorrow when I´ll come back with new blood and water. I´m so sorry! So sorry. Aidan would have been able to help you like he did once. I know where to the morphine disappeared at the hotel. No wonder as he works as a nurse down in hospital…"

Hospital, hospital…

Henry´s mind tried to remember what Aidan had to do in the hospital. He had told him…what did he tell him? Working over there with a friend… The man he met at Aidan´s front door and the man he had seen inside when Aidan brought him in that afternoon after Suren took his skin… What was his name? John? Joseph…? Josh! The friendly but somewhat suspicious man who didn´t look so much as shocked when he stumbled into the house at the edge of unconsciousness. Looking like…like a monster!

Josh had to be this special friend, his roommate. A nurse like Aidan would be the only one to be able to cope with such an injured man like him.

His fingers clenched when he tried to get Atlee´s attention. His lips moved and he whispered: "Jo…Josh! Find him!...He…he friend…of Aidan!"

"Josh who? And what about _friend of Aidan_? Who´s it?" Atlee put his ear nearer to Henry´s lips; "And where?...You know, where he is? If he is willing to help…"

"Hou…house. Go…for…Josh." Henry let out a hard breath. Speaking was so exhausting. He could only whisper. Anything else beyond it would rise new pain in his pierced chest.

Atlee tried to put together this split information, tried to find out what Henry was going to tell him.

"Josh is a friend of Aidan. Okay?...Hmm, he lives in a house…?"

"Y…yes…"

"Guud…and where do I find this Josh? And…" Atlee made a thoughtful pause; "Is he a human or a vampire? You know, I can´t enter a house without invitation! Don´t wanna go crispy!" Private houses or rooms could not be entered without invitation of the owner. Public buildings made no such life threatening problems.

"Tell…him…" Breathing. A suppressed moan. "Tell…Aidan needs…him! Help."

"Okay. But if I´ll find him he for sure wants a verification that I tell the truth! He won´t know me!" Atlee had doubts that a man, human or vampire, would trust him when he went to knock on his door.

"Say him…Henry…Durham…sends you. He invited…me…" Henry stopped and it took a real long moment before he went on. He seemed to slip away into losing consciousness…

"He, stay awake, Henry!"

He couldn´t simply beat his cheeks to keep him awake. Henry was on the edge, at the absolute border with his strength and Atlee so dearly would have let him slip away but they had no time to lost. Time was precious.

"HENRY! Stay with me! C´mon!"

He know it was hard to demand answers from him but it was the only possibility.

Eyelids were opened to slits again and a moan escaped his lips. With a deep breath he went on.

"Josh…helped Aidan…save me…", he whispered weakly.

"After Suren…?" He didn´t want to pronounce the cruelty again but he knew what had happened to him. The whole council had talked about it like about a victory of some strange kind. Atlee felt a hard knob rising in his throat. He swallowed.

"Yes." The _Yes_ so weak. "Josh…invited…me in." The lids fell close and it took Henry an immense effort to open them again.

"Where for Heaven´s Sake is this house he lives in?"

"Go…go…", his lower lip trembled. "Hos…pital…" Henry moaned and Atlee felt so sorry for him. The blood and the water helped only a bit.

"Hospital. Okay! Which one?...HENRY!" He cupped his cheeks, his thumbs comforting the skin.

"Boston…" Henry forced his brain to remind the name. He moaned.

"Which one? Henry! Tell me….oh dear God…"

"Boston…Suffolk Coun..ty…" His head would have fallen onto his chest if not for Atlee´s hands which take hold of him. With one hand he grabbed the pot again and lifted it to the split lips, poured a sip of water into Henry´s mouth.

"Drink. It´s the last for today, is sad to say so…"

Henry stared into his eyes, his pupils bled black like the darkest night.

"Ge…me…Josh!", he pressed out, his head lolling like an egg on a table.

"I´ll go searching for him! I promise you, Henry!"

Black pools stared into his eyes, a coughing fit shook his body and Henry moaned, then his head fell back and he become unconscious.

Atlee set the pot on the ground, carefully gripped for Henry´s head and placed it with chin onto his chest, a somewhat more comfortable position than otherwise. His hand moved under the ruined shirt, felt for the wound. Felt the sharp tip of the hook that peered out of the sternum. When he tore his fingers back he saw that the wound had closed over a bit at least.

He took the pot and after a last view towards the hanging vampire he left the cellar room.

"What did you do in there so long?" The guardian called at him when the door fell close behind him. He sounded suspicious.

"I tortured him a little bit to get some information about the assault he had planned. Seems…it wasn´t so successful…" He shrunk his shoulders, smiled; " …will go on tomorrow. How sad he lost consciousness to fast…"

The guardian looked at him with disbelief and doubt; "You aren´t going to kill him?! You´ve heard what Mother said: She wants him alive as long as he suits her. If you damage him she would be very angry and maybe you will be in the doghouse! You know her will!", he warned Atlee.

"That none of your business!" Atlee responded.

"I only wanted to…"

"Bite my ass!"

"If you let me do!" , the guardian shot back and shook his head when the Dutch whirled around for a mere second and like a whoosh his fangs were visible before he disappeared.

"Those Dutch...driving earth like saints in a damn closed horse-drawn buggy but so horny the crack of dawn isn´t safe!" he mumbled. Then he sat back to wait for the other guard to exchange.

Atlee took his black jacket and his hat and left the house, pretending to be a flawless man among the English. He smiled when he made his way into town to search for the hospital and those Josh.

Entering the hospital would be no problem. No one would be there to refuse him entrance in his simple dress and with the attitude of the religious conservative when it came to the Dutch.

It took a lot of time to reach the hospital from the suburban area of Boston.

Atlee decided to take a bus and when he entered an elderly woman looked at him.

"You guys taking a bus? Normally we know you driving in a horse-drawn buggy! Did your horse gonna get a leg broken in Boston traffic?" She looked at him that strange way most city slickers did. Atlee smiled and answered with a friendly voice;

"No Ma´am. My horse is still fine but my buggy has a broken wheel axle. And I´m a little late so I decided to take the bus by additionally breaking a rule instead of a promise to my friend. So gonna tell me what´s the lesser sin, Madam…"

He sat on the other side from the central corridor.

She shot him a last look and shook her hand, numbling anything about the changes of modern time.

Atlee looked out of the side window so that he won´t have to go on with the discussion with the old lady.

After nearly half an hour the bus stopped in front of the Suffolk County Hospital. Atlee looked up the front, hesitated a moment and then climbed up the pathway...

_Out in the woods a few hours before_

Ray looked over to Nora who aimed her pistol. Her thumb pulled back the hammer of her weapon. The click let Ray turn his head, his eyes wide and his hands were holding the rifle, aiming at Josh.  
"PUT IT DOWN!" she screamed at him.

His face showed that he didn´t know if to aim at Nora now or simply at Josh. His heart was racing with fear and anger. Josh watched from one to another, his brown eyes wide with despair.

"Kill him, Nora!", he urged when he saw her hands shaking, clinging to the grip of her pistol. She wasn´t sure if to fire. Never before she had fired a gun at somebody.  
Nora, do it! Save yourself", Josh screamed.  
"SHUT UP!", Ray shouted, Josh´s rifle, its muzzle shaking slightly.

Seconds seemed to lengthen into minutes.

None of them was an ice cold killer when it came to human beings.

Josh, Ray and Nora had hunted down animals when turned werewolf during Full Moon. Had torn game animals limb from limb. Josh had himself prevented from killing humans by hiding away in the woods or lock himself in into a cellar or a cage like box.

Nora was far more into being werewolf. She never denied this her dark side, kind of enjoyed it in a way Josh never called his own. He always had fought his wild side, had searched for a cure like from a medical disease.  
Until Nora came up with the statement that he was wrong. No medical reason for the werewolf thing like an infection by a kind of virus where he could search for a cure. She claimed him to be too much involved with his nurse profession as to see what reality was: A damn good old curse!

"DO IT, Nora!" Josh shouted from the ground.  
"PUT IT DOWN!...PUT IT DOWN!", Nora demanded to Ray.  
"SHUT UP, Josh! Let not compromise yourself by her! She´s mad!", Ray shouted.  
"DO IT, Nora!"  
Nora lifted her hands, aimed newly...

Ray pulled back his rifle´s hammer, his eyes all despair, the gun whirled around and he...

...fired.

Simultaneously Nora fired her handgun.

The shots clang like the short angry bark of a dog through the clearing.

Two screams yelled through the clearing and Ray was whirled back, fell down on his back and Josh was nearly turned over when the bullet hit his thigh. He grabbed for his leg with the hands, felt the hot thick liquid of the blood that ran down his leg and into his jeans. The pain was nearly unbearable and he stared in shock on the wound.

His head shot around and he looked over to Nora who stood there, the smoking handgun sunken down, aiming to the ground.

She looked at her weapon like she saw it for the first time. Then her head rose and she made two or three steps into the direction where Ray was laying on the ground. He didn´t move.

"What...?", Josh gasped, stared at her and tried to move. But the pain stopped him immediately and he groaned from deep within his throat that suddenly was dry like the freekin´ Sahara.

Nora stepped over to Ray, her handgun aiming at him. Ready to fire if he would make the slightest move. His eyes were closed and when he didn´t move she bent down to him, her left hand fumbling for his throat were the pulse point laid. Her fingers searched for the pulse.

It took seconds until she found a pulse. Weak and fast.

Ray was still alive.

But for how long?

Josh tried to lean on his elbow and he finally managed it, watched over to Ray.  
"Is...is he dead, Nora? You...you shot him!", he gasped.

"Yeah, I got him! But he´s alive. In the moment at least... OH my God! How could all these happen? Gonna go mad with it! But Josh...how are you? Dear God! He shot you!  
"Are you okay, Nora?" he urgently pressed out and tried to look over her, searching for blood, a wound.

"There had only been two shots, Josh. I shot Ray and he shot at you. Shot him down the moment he fired at you! But you are injured, Josh!" She kneeled down beside him, her fingers went for the wound. Feeling over it. With trembling fingers she tried to tear open the fabric of his jeans. Her fingertips went red immediately when she tore away the blood soaked material.

"You´re damn bleeding, Josh!" Her voice came thick and fast and Josh wondered where the experienced nurse went. Nora had seen often enough gun shot wounds in the ER of the hospital. Nothing uncommon to her when she had shift in the Emergency Room.  
But now she seemed to have lost it.

"Nora! Calm yourself down!" Josh urged; "I get it! Care for Ray if he´s still alive...I can cope with it, Nora!"  
His hand went for her face, trembling.  
"Call 911, Nora! You still have your cell with you? Ain´t you?", his voice sounded frightful.  
"Yes...yes, but you..." she stuttered.  
"Call in for help!" His head sank back and he groaned when her hands managed it to wrap a cloth around his thigh.

Then she went over to the place where Ray was lying. Low sounds came out of his mouth and his lids fluttered. He groaned, clung for his shoulder where the jacket was soaked with blood. His eyes met hers.  
"What did you do? You...shot me, bitch!"  
He tried to fight off her hand with which she felt for his wound.  
"Get away! How could...you dare shooting me down like a freekin´ animal?"  
"You acted like that freekin´ animal!" she countered with a harsh voice and eyes on fire. She felt her rage rising, fought the urge to pull out her handgun again and shot him finally right into the head.

"Piss off! Maybe I´m gonna die here but better than..." His voice broke when a wave of pain nearly sent him into unconsciousness. He groaned and his head lolled to the side, his teeth bared in a grimace of pain and he tried to move his left hand, stopped helplessly. His right hand felt for the rifle but it was, for good luck, lying in a distance, away from him when the bullet had sent him whirling around.

"How I´m gonna explain that mess? How I´m gonna explain the rescue team why I´m out here amidst nowhere with two men shot?" She stared at Josh, her face reflecting the inner turmoil she was in.  
"He gasped, fought for breath when a new wave of pain shot through his leg. It took him a moment before he was able to form a clear thought. They were going to need a halfway plausible explanation when the police was going to investigate what had happened out here in the woods.

Every hospital or doctor had to announce gunshot wounds by law.

Josh tried to construct an answer.

"My car is parking on the road...let´s think about three or four guys, driving by in a pick up, stopping us in an attempt to rob... Ray was behind us on the road and he stopped by, tried to help us and the situation with the gang went out of control...There was a close fight...Ray was shot by one of the men, his shot missed and accidently he hit me in the leg..."  
"But my handgun..", Nora began and directed to the weapon she had laid on the ground.  
"Get rid of it, Nora! You must get that thing away...Clean your hands...Cause of the gunshot residues! You know...you´re damn kind of knowin´ this!" Josh urged. He gasped, pressed his hand on his leg that seemed to be on fire and groaned. His head fell back, he breathed hard repeatedly and then he lifted his head again, tried to look over to where Ray was lying.

"I...I don´t know if this will work!", Nora countered.  
"It has to! Damn it! Nora, where went your brain? You really don´t have a clue! Ain´t you? Get the cell and call 911! I don´t wanna bleed out in the damn woods!", he cursed. His head fell back and the trees shot upwards. He moaned when the world seemed to turn over, then to whirl around.

"Josh? JOSH?!", her voice nearly turned over. She bent down, cupped Josh´s temples with her hands and felt for his pulse. She found him still alive, simply passed out.  
"What the fuck! Calls himself a man and passes out by a damn gunshot wound! Okay, lem´me do!" she cursed under her breath and pulled out her cell.  
She dialed 911, caught the line. Highway police out here in nowhere Massachusetts.

"Hello?! This is Nora Sergeant calling...yes, we need help! Two friends of mine are wounded! A...a pack of Teens...they tried to highjack our car! My colleague and a friend..they got shot..."  
The officer asked her for more details and her location.  
"We are out here, both sides of the road is forest...Yes...yes we were driving Road 117, two miles behind crossing where road 126 is going south to Wayland...here is a clearing with a hut." She listened to the officer. "Yeap. Gunshot in the leg. Yes, I did a bandage! Damn, I know what I´m doing! I am a nurse at Boston Suffolk County! My friend is shot into the shoulder! Need an ambulance to get them into the hospital...Okay...okay...we´re waiting!" she groaned inwardly. "What the heck shall we do otherwise, dumbass!", she mumbled when she clicked off the cell.

Nora changed between Ray and Josh regular. She took her handgun and ran into the forest until she found a deep hole in the ground. Hectically she began to burrow the gun into the ground, shoved earth and leafs over it and ran back, looked for both of them.  
Josh was still unconscious and Ray was lying on his back, staring at her with rage, clenching his teeth from pain. Groans and moans came out between his teeth and Nora brought some distance between her and him. His facial expression hiding nothing. Much less his predatory nature that was covered under the human shape.

It seemed to take an eternity until she heard the siren of the ambulance.  
Minutes later two members from the local fire fighter brigade came out of the ambulance. Each of them went to one of the men. Nora followed the paramedic to Ray.

"Don´t say a thing, Ray! Keep simply shut up! I´m tired of your filthy mouth! They get you in the hospital and Basta!", she warned him. Then she rushed over to Josh. He had regained consciousness and tried his best to assist the paramedic who cared for him.  
"It´s okay, Sir...I´ll do..."  
"I...I´m...nurse...", Josh tried a grin that went to hell in a handbasket when the pain split his face.  
"For sure! But sometimes even a nurse needs some help!" The paramedic smiled when he put on a new bandage before he helped Josh up and hooked him under, led him into the ambulance.

A police car sped into the clearing, stopped amidst a cloud of swirled-up clay and leafs. A local sheriff and his partner climbed out of the police car. Automatically the sheriff grabbed for his gun holster then his hand went down when he saw none of the potential attackers.

"We got your emergency call, Miss! What happened?", he asked, his eyes meanwhile screening the area for details of the crime scene. He was suspicious by profession and his tone was all professional and determining.

"We were driving road 117 , my friend Josh..."  
"Josh who?"  
"Josh Levison. We are working at the same hospital and we wanted to visit the lake shore. As a child I often went there together with my father. I told him and he said we would visit the place. He simply wanted to know what it was like...Ray was about to meet us there a bit later"  
"You were alone on the road?"  
"Yeah, a long time. Then suddenly a car appeared behind ours. It was following us over a long distance..must have come from one of the crossroads we passed... I saw him in the driving mirror and he...he came closer...", she described the situation, thinking over what to say next.  
"You can describe the car? You have a number for me? Cause the car followed yours over a long time like you said...", the sheriff insisted.

"A dark pick up. Anything between dark blue and black...God, it´s dark! Can´t get the differ...", she rolled with her eyes.  
"What´s about the license tag?"  
"License tag?! I didn´t look for, sheriff! I looked onto the road and when Josh suddenly said that this damn car was coming damn close, I turned my head to find him so near I couldn´t see any fuckin´ tag!"  
"Did he try to drive against your car? Or get you off the road?"

"No, not that moment...Josh said...he said he would stop over there. There would be a parking lot and we would wait until that car was gone...Oh god, we were so wrong...!" she grabbed at her forehead, her fingers trembling. "We were so wrong! The car...it followed us! Josh stopped and suddenly four men got off that pick up. They came over to us and Josh...he locked the door and tried to start our car, but two of them went in front of our car, so he..he couldn´t simply run them over! My God!" she turned her head to the right, looked over to Ray who was supported by the two paramedics who were putting him on the gurney.

"And what´s about Ray? When did he come into play?", the sheriff asked. He wrote notes into his notebook.  
"He came after s with a few minutes distance. Must have closed up to us so he saw the following car...Possibly...", she shrugged her shoulders, grabbed for her neck and let out a soft moan.  
"Are you hurt?", the sheriff asked her, his voice now a bit more sorrowful.  
"No. No! Only...oh I think I got a tense in my muscles...nothing of relevance...", she shook her head, stretched her neck and sat down on the stair of the ambulance.

"Did you know any of the men that attacked you?"  
"No. No! Never seen them before...I think they still couldn´t have been from here...", she sounded thoughtful.  
"Wherefrom did you take this?"  
"One of them...he said they should have stayed in Philly...They got into a dispute about where to go next...But then...then Josh made a mistake...He left the car to ward off the taller of the two from the engine hood. I tried to keep him inside, but he made it outside...He´s such an idiot sometimes..." Nora grabbed for her head, her temple then she stared at the officer; "Can we drive to a hospital now...", she directed into the ambulance where the paramedics cared for Josh and Ray.

"Did Mr. Levison attack the men?"  
"No. He told them to leave but they simply laughed and the taller pushed him backwards. Josh...he stumbled and tried to rise to defend himself. Suddenly the man had a handgun in his hands and he aimed at Josh. That moment Ray stopped by and jumped out of his car, his rifle in the hand. Then...all went crazy...Oh my god!"  
"So these men went to shoot anybody?"

"Ray stood in front of him. Josh was coming back to me and Ray shouted he should go back in our car! The same I was doing. I shouted at Josh to come in again and lock the door, but he stayed outside...This man with the gun aimed at Ray and shot. The shot went aside, didn´t hit him...Ray...oh my...he shouted something and when the man fired a second time...Ray fired his rifle, but he was hit in the shoulder and his shot went wrong, hit Josh when Ray´s rifle whirled downwards. It was an accident, sheriff! A damn accident! Ray didn´t intend to fire on Josh! He tried to help him!"

"Okay. We´ll take that all on the precinct. You´ll come with us and we´ll take your evidence, Ms. Sergeant..."  
"Ray isn´t guilty, sheriff! He tried to protect us and got shot by himself!"  
"That I didn´t say. All of you are witnesses and victims of an assault! I don´t accuse any of you for a crime! But you can help us. Maybe you´ll recognize one or more of the men in our wanted list or on our photos...", the sheriff directed to his car and his partner finished his first crime scene investigation.

Nora bent into the ambulance.  
"Josh, I´ll follow to the hospital! I have to make clear some things on the precinct! Don´t worry! I´ll come by later! See you later, Josh!"  
"Okay...see you...", he mumbled, his voice slowly. Possibly the paramedic had provided him with an analgetic.  
"Where do you bring them to? Which hospital?", Nora asked the paramedic who stood next to her.  
"Cause Mr. Levison works at Boston Suffolk County, I guess we´ll bring him in there... We´ll tell the Police Department. Don´t worry...", he smiled.  
"Okay. Thanks a lot...", she smiled with some effort, seemed tensed. Then Nora left together with the sheriff, entered the police car and they turned and drove away.

The ambulance doors were closed and then they drove back onto the road.

Josh couldn´t remember much of the ride to the hospital. He was asleep when the ambulance reached the Boston Suffolk County hospital. Finally he woke up in the Emergency Room.

A nurse greeted him when he opened his eyes to slits.  
"Hey, Josh! What´s up?"  
"Mike, you frog face!", Josh mumbled.  
"Frog face? What did that dumpass of paramedic shot you, hmm? You sound like you´re stoned up to the cortex!" Mike waved his hand in front of Josh´s face, grinned from ear to ear and Josh would have liked to slap him into the face when he simply would have been able to.

"Stop...it...!"  
"Okay. Seriously, Josh! What happened?"  
"I got shot in the...damn woods..."  
"In the woods? Don´t gonna tell me one mistook you for a wolf!", Mike joked.

Josh couldn´t smile. Not funny.

Mike didn´t know what was going on with him every Full Moon. For heavens sake not.

But Mike could it see in Josh´s face that this joke went totally wrong.  
"Hey, old dude! Sorry, didn´t intend to annoy you..."  
"Shut up, Mike. Let´s gonna get that damn bullet out of my leg. That damn hurts without the novamin. I feel like a sieve...", Josh mumbled, his voice angry and tired the same time.  
Mike nodded and a young doctor entered the room, bent over Josh...

Damn! Aidan would simply drink a bag of blood or two and he was going to heal fast. Sometimes vampires had definitely advantages over werewolves.  
A few hours later. Entrance.

Atlee entered the hospital entrance. He looked around a moment, searched for the info desk.  
An elderly nurse sat there and she looked up from her computer when Atlee reached the reception desk.  
"Good evening, Sir! What can I do for you?" She looked professional although when her eyes moved over the man in his black dressing. She knew the Dutch. Everybody in the north eastern states down to Pennsylvania and Ohio knew at least anything about those people who denied improvement, TV, electricity and cars. But rarely a Dutch got lost into the hospital because they mostly cured themselves their old way.

If she was astonished to find him in here she was hiding it very well behind a mask of professionalism.

"Good evening. I´m searching for someone. His name is Josh and he works in here. He…he is a nurse...Can I speak to him?" Atlee bent over the desk, smiling politely. He didn´t use his manipulative powers now onto her. Simply tried it the harmless way.  
"Josh? Do you have a surname?"  
"No, sorry. Simply Josh..." Atlee smiled.

She bent over her computer, wrote in the name, searching for his request.  
"We have more than one Josh in here. To be exactly five!" She shrugged her shoulders; "Can you give me more information to define which one I should connect you to?"  
"Uhm, as far as I know he works together on the same ward with an Aidan Wait...Also a nurse in here."  
"Aidan Wait. Okay...a moment please...Yeah! Got it. Josh Levison."  
"Right! That´s him. Does he work now? What´s his...shift...? I´ve to speak with him! It´s urgent, Ma´am!" he pressed onto her with some determination.

"Uhm, I´m sorry. But he doesn´t work in the moment. Are you a friend of him or a relative?", she denied.  
"A...friend. Why do you ask?"  
"He is called in sick! I´m sorry, Sir."  
"Called in sick? Uh! So he´s at home?", Atlee asked.  
When Josh was at home he would have to drive back to Henry and to ask him for where this Josh was living. That would take additional time. Time that they didn´t have. He felt anger risen that he didn´t ask Henry, but Henry had been in such a bad condition that it had been difficult enough to get the name out of him, not to mention any further details.

He breathed hard, kept silent for a moment before he went on with her.  
"Is Josh at home? Please tell me..."  
He could force her but kept himself back. This nurse didn´t seem to be uncooperative. She simply didn´t know how to handle him.

She kept silent a moment. He saw in her face how she thought over what to do now.  
This Dutch was polite and he looked harmless. Maybe it was really urgent that he was going to meet his friend. Then she made a decision.

"Uhm, Mr. Levison is lying on the surgical ward."  
"Surgical ward?! Uhm! Is he very ill? I didn´t know..."  
"Wait a moment please. I´ll ask there if you can visit him..." She grabbed for her phone, called the surgery. It took a moment then she turned to him.  
"Mr. Levison is awake. He has woken up from the anesthesia! You can visit him but please don´t stay for to long..."  
"Where do I find him?" Atlee sounded a bit released.  
"Third floor. Ward D, Room number 309..."  
"Thank you very much. You´d been very kindly..." Atlee smiled at her and went for the staircase.

When he reached the third floor he went along, looked for the tag with the D. A few moments later he stood in front of the door to number 309.  
He waited for a second then knocked. Opened the door.  
It was a single room.

The hospital seemed to care well for it´s employees. The single room was a fortune because they won´t have unintended listeners when talking Aidan/Henry.  
Atlee closed the door behind him and slowly went nearer to the bed.  
He smelled blood from a fresh wound. Josh was lying in the bed, his eyes closed and he breathed calmly. His left thigh was covered by a bandage.

"Josh? Hello!?", Atlee tried.  
The closed eyelids fluttered and finally opened to slits.  
Josh saw a man with red golden hair standing beside his bed. Wearing a black coat and underneath a black jacket with black pants.  
A priest? A Rabbi?  
He hadn´t ask for a Rabbi.

He tried to look closer. That damn narcotics were shading his mind.  
"Who...who are you?", Josh stammered. He tried to watch more closely. "Sorry...I...I didn´t ask...for a priest or...a Rabbi. I´m...Jewish!", he protested weakly. "I´m...not gonna...dying!"  
"I hope so, Josh." Atlee smiled. This Josh was clearly having a hangover from the narcotics. Not uncommon when he went through surgery.  
"Who?"  
"I´m Atlee. I´m neither a priest nor a Rabbi. I´m Dutch."

Josh stared at him like at a creature from another planet. Dutch? What the heck did he have to do with the Dutch?  
"Sorry, but you...seem to be...wrong in here. False room. I´m alone...in here. No Amish...room mate..."  
Atlee smiled; "You´re Josh Levison, am I right?"  
"Yeah, seemed to be...as long as no one...took over my body..." Josh mumbled. The Amish bent nearer.

"You work together with Aidan. Right?"  
"Yeap. We´re working on the same ward...Didn´t see him. He left two days ago...Do you know him? He didn´t tell me..."  
Josh stared at Atlee. Aidan was missing since two days. He hadn´t tell him why and where he went. Maybe he had problems with his vampire colleagues but Aidan hadn´t tell him into what he was involved. He was banished from all vampires then came back and now he disappeared two days ago.

"I´m an old friend of Aidan. He needs your help! And his childe Henry needs help. Henry has sent me to search for you, Josh!" Atlee sounded concerned.  
"Hen...ry...? What´s going on...with that Henry...?", Josh mumbled. He had difficulties to understand. His brain was working hard to cob the details together the right way. He sighed, turned his head over and the room beside him seemed to float.  
"Whoa!" He grabbed for his temple and breathed rapidly.

Hands cupped his temples, smiled.  
"Careful...be careful. You´re coming right out of anesthesia...don´t move. It seems your system is weakened. You bled..." Atlee warned him.  
"Yeap...seems I´ve lost an amount of blood. I...I was shot...in the woods..." He sighed under the cool hands. The skin temperature seemed to be equal to that of Aidan.  
Aidan?

Josh closed his eyes, fought for memories. This face...anywhere...he knew this face from anywhere... He moaned. Crap! He had seen this man before. At...at... The memory hit him right on the head like with a hammer.  
That´s it!

He had seen this face with the frame of red golden, short hair in that tunnel. The tunnel with the iron bars where he was caught in a kind of cage! Transforming into his werewolf state and then going into a fight with another werewolf. Surrounded by a crowd of bellowing guys who had bet on him or his adversary. A face in the crowd that meant nothing in this moment.  
He reminded it because of this rarely hair color.

Oh my God!

"You..you´re a...vampire!" Josh whispered, stared at Atlee. "Where is Aidan? What did you do to him?" Josh tried to rise his head, to shake off the hands. "Don´t do that!" He coughed.  
"Sschhh...keep calm..."Atlee smiled at him, sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands laying into his lab.  
"What´s with Aidan? Tell me!" Josh sounded excited. His eyes didn´t left the face of the Dutch.  
"I did nothing to him. Aidan is in trouble..."

Atlee bent nearer, his voice low. He listened to the door if they were to be undisturbed. When he felt safe he went on.  
"Aidan is in big trouble, Josh... He planned to kill Mother, the leader of the Boston Vampire Society. Henry should help him but his plans failed. The guardians caught both! Aidan...Aidan is buried and..."  
"Buried? What?" Josh rose up on his elbow. He couldn´t believe what he had heard. "Is...is he dead?" His voice trembled with disbelief.

Aidan had been his friend. They had been friends. And now...  
Suddenly his throat went dry with grief.

Atlee shook his head no.  
"No. He´s alive. The Council and Mother adjudged him to be buried alive!"  
"Buried alive? Oh my God!" Josh felt helpless. They had to free him and he was caught in that damn bed with that gunshot wound!

He fought for breath. So fast and heavy that he suddenly saw Atlee watch him with an expression of concern in the face. Vampires were capable of facial expressions. They were no dead things walking like a Zombie. With stoned face and dead eyes. Aidan had kind of...reached him.

From Aidan he learned more about vampire stuff than watching TV or reading fantastic lore.

Aidan had...

"You all okay?", he heard the voice of Atlee and Josh turned his face to look at him. His lower lip trembled.  
"Yeah, I´m okay...Kind of...Except for my leg...", he mumbled. His hand slowly moved down to his left thigh and his fingers felt for the bandage. Josh sighed. Then his voice rose.

He got excited.  
"We have to get Aidan free!"  
Atlee laid a finger on Josh´s lips, shook his head to make clear that Josh shouldn´t speak with a loud voice. His head turning to the door.  
"Anybody...out there?", Josh whispered.

The door opened and a nurse entered.  
She went to the bedside, looked for the infusion bottle that was hanging on an i.v.-pile.  
"I can look onto that for myself..." Josh complained; "I´m a nurse myself! Forgot?"  
"No, Mr. Levison. I know that you´re a nurse yourself but as long as you are lying in this bed on my ward, you´re falling under my responsibility, Mr. Nurse!" she answered and she didn´t sound like she was going to accept any protest.

Patients, especially when they were part of the medical staff, were way better to handle when they were asleep under anesthetics.

Atlee silently smiled under his breath.

After she had finished her responsibility she left the room again. Atlee found himself short before compelling her to leave but it became unnecessary now. He let out a breath of relief. When the door fell closed he turned his head back to Josh.

"We have to free Aidan! Under all conditions! Oh my God! Can´t image him to be...buried...alive! That´s ...that´s ghastly, gruesome! We have to..." Josh´s mind cringed with despair.  
"We have to get him out of there. Henry is of no help in the moment!"  
"They...", Josh waved his hand around; "...they caught him too?! Is that right?"  
Atlee nodded. "Yes. You won´t like to see what they did to him...", he said in a low voice.  
"What did they do?", Josh insisted.  
"Uh, you really don´t want to know..." Atlee´s evasive answer wasn´t to calm down Josh.

"What did they do to Henry?"Josh repeated; "I´ve seen him...skinned! Anything worse you can imagine for a...living being? So, tell me...!", he demanded. The image of that bleeding, skinned, near to death vampire was vivid. "Nailed him to the ground?"

Atlee´s eyes widened with astonishment.  
This human being was...incredible.

He shook his head no.  
"They...they suspended him on a hook!"  
"WHAT?"  
Atlee´s nodding showed him that he didn´t misunderstood.  
"This...son of Aidan...I mean, he´s kind of a son to Aidan...or which term did you use? Child?"  
"Childe. Aidan is his maker. He turned him, is his...Sire...", the Dutch explained.

Josh nodded, bite his lips. This Henry always seemed to get screwed.  
"But I can´t do much! I´m fixed to that damn bed and I don´t know for how long the doctors will keep me in here!" Under no circumstances he would be able to go into a fight or anything like that with a bunch of undead troublemakers. Not with his leg.  
"Then we´ll have to wait until you´re able to accompany me." Atlee sadly responded.

"Oh my God! Is there no one other to help you? Anybody you can...trust enough?" Josh thought what the odds were that they would be successful.  
"The place is well guarded. The burial area as well as the cellar where they keep Henry in. I have access to him because Mother demanded me to feed him with small amounts of blood to keep him alive as long as Mother is pleased with her...prey. I have to be more than careful while providing him with more blood than allowed..." Atlee shook his head thoughtful. A pondering silence filled the room.

"So...you do?", Josh asked. Enough blood, he knew from Aidan, would strengthen and at last heal a vampire.  
"I´m risking a lot! When they get me on feeding him this way I´m gonna end up on a hook myself. I´m not sure why I´m doing this, but..."  
" So you owe Aidan something? He did you a favor? Or what´s up?"

Atlee looked at Josh, his eyes flashing black for a moment. "He...once saved my life...from a pack of werewolves that were chasing us through the woods..."  
"I wasn´t involved in this! It wasn´t me who started the...hunt. I killed none..." Josh insisted in self-defense.  
"I know..." he simply answered.

"I won´t blame you for what happened out there, Josh…" Atlee added. He knew that Josh would be his only help in the moment. Among the other vampires there would be no open opponent to Mother. He had seen her killing opponents with one movement of her hand, slashing throats open with no effort. Her power was not to be called into question.

"So what did you think we´ll do to get both of them out of wherever they are?", Josh looked at Atlee whose face went into concentration. He could practically se it working in the Dutch´s brain and when Atlee spoke he sounded determined;

"I´m going to feed Henry with blood over the time we´ll have to wait until you can walk out of the hospital and…"

"I don´t know how long it´ll take, Atlee! I don´t want to rise wrong expectations. Whether in you nor in Henry…", Josh tried to slow down his enthusiasm. "I guess I can´t simply call you guys when I´m ready to leave. No cell, ain´t you?"

Amish didn´t tend to have telephones, the less cells and email accounts.

"No, but I have a friend and he can call you, ask for your release from the bed and then we´ll go. So…uhm, I´m going to feed Henry to at least strengthen him a bit…Won´t be healing so far, but keep him alive and then we´ll go to the place together, free him and then we´ll did out Aidan from the grave…"

"Yeap! So far to your plans. But you told me, the place is guarded!", Josh countered.

Atlee nodded; "I know all guards out there and I´m allowed to have access to the cellar for I was ordered to keep Henry alive for Mother´s en…enjoyment." Enjoyment! He swallowed down a knot in his throat. Mother is a devil! Her so called mercy was an excrescence of her royal brain…

Josh saw the expression behind the face of the vampire.

"Uhm, what´s going on?"

"What?" Atlee looked somewhat surprised then he took up his route; "I can handle these guys. They won´t be suspicious if I come in and therefore I can simply be ready with them, so you would be able to come down into the cellar with no problems." His voice was totally calm.

"Simply be ready!? You mean…you ´re gonna…kill them simply?"

"Yes."

"Uh…" He couldn´t simply say okay. But that was to be vampire. Simply taking once life if you feel any need for it. "Are these guards vampires…or humans?"

"Human."

"Uh hu! Can´t tell I agree with you…", Josh mumbled. The option to simply kill any other humans out of any purpose wasn´t simple for him to gulp down. He always was hiding from humans when the nights of the wolf came, so he won´t kill any by mistaking them for prey. He waved with his hand; "Uhm, I think…is there no other solution for you than simply kill them?" He looked into Atlee´s eyes and waited him to falter, but he was wrong.

"If we let them live, simply tie them to be free later on…they would tell Mother and other vampires and the hunt would start. None of us would ever be safe along the East Coast… These guards have sworn an oath to fight for and defend Mother with their lives. To serve her and to obey. They won´t simply stand back and let us do…", Atlee stated without emotion.

Josh nodded and breathed deep. He pulled up the blanket over his belly and let his head sink back against the pillows. He stared at the white ceiling of his hospital room, then he turned his view to Atlee again who was waiting for him patiently.

"So, will you help me?"

"Yes. We´ll get them out of there. Alone if it´s for Aidan! He´s my friend and I would rather go down to hell to pull his ass out of the purgatory than to let him roast…" His grin was evil. Not meant to Atlee but as a warning to this Mother.

Mother!

What a misuse of a word for such a monster in human/vampire shape!, he thought.

"Okay. Thank you. And there´s one thing I´m not allowed to forget: We need blood! A lot of blood! Henry and Aidan will be hungry beyond imagination. All you can imagine, it would be worse. I´m sure you never have seen a totally starved vampire, the less to handle with him…" Atlee set the theme on the table that they would have to feed them after the release.

In front of Josh´s inner eye he got images of a starved, near death Aidan, hungry, fangs bared and growling and running after him like a mad by pain driven animal. Aidan needed blood to heal after the near-staking but he had been in control. Even a skinned Henry had been enough under control as far as one could be with no more skin and being stoned up to the cortex by morphine…

But this time both would be starved by weeks long lack of blood…

"You…you gonna make that out that it´s me to get them blood…?", Josh began.

"Yes. You´re working in a hospital. You´ve access to blood!", Atlee answered right away. He seemed to have absolutely no doubts about that Josh could get to it with unlimited access.

"Stop, stop! Don´t be wrong! Even I can´t get blood unlimited. If I would, I would have provided Aidan with food…for home. Since they secured the blood bank, Aidan has no longer access to it! Do you or one of your so beloved honorable Council members anything to do with the fact? Had it been one of them to care for that Aidan was cut off from his more or less legal sources? To chase him back into the lab of the community?"

Atlee fall silent.

For a moment only.

But this moment, as short as it was, told everything. Finally Atlee nodded. Josh directed to Atlee´s head.

"So you mean…you confess that it was one of you…from your community, if not one of your Dutch Elders who cut him off! Am I taking that right?", his tone became stern and angry.

"Yes. But it hadn´t been the Dutch Elders howbeit they want to have all vampires keeping away from all human connections. Vampires holding on human connections are seen as to be weak. But when it came to Aidan…it was Mother´s will to cut his sources off to drive him back into the dependence and environment of the Family!"

"Okay! So this is out, finally. Aidan had told me a lot of you Dutch and their old order ways. Yes! We do talk! Even if you don´t believe it but we talk about his urges and wishes and what happens and happened to him. His experiences over the time he´s living!"

"I don´t have doubts that Aidan talks about to you. He called you his friend. Against all odds."

"All odds? Atlee…don´t drive me mad nor call him mad! We made friends even when your kind is gonna spit on us like a damn pissing dog! I survived that damn cage of yours! Your fuckin´ freakin´ kind of enjoyment that was to set you back on the level of a worse than medieval roman emperor! Like the fucking Caesar Augustus who killed thousands of captives, Christians, in his arena! Fed them to the lions! I won´t even dare to think about what you did over the ages to the werewolves you hold captive!"

Josh´s face tensed under a sudden pain that shot through his leg and in reflex he put his hand on his thigh. The pain stopped his eruption of words he nearly had spat at Atlee. Intended or unintended. Gave the Dutch way to answer.

"I never was fond of dog fights. I don´t have any resentments for your kind. We all have our niches and finally we don´t fed the same stuff… No reason to be opponents. So far for me!", he explained.

Josh stared at him for a very long moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, then he nodded, sighed and directed to the door.

"Maybe you´ll better go now, before the doctor comes in…I´ll give you my cell number…for that friend of yours who owns a phone…", Josh grinned and opened his nightstand to get a sheet of paper out. He wrote his number on the paper, folded it and gave it to Atlee. "And don´t get lose of it! Otherwise you´ll have to come regular to see if I´m still in bed."

Atlee smiled. The first time since he had entered the room, put the paper into his jacket.

"I´ll call you soon, Josh. And…thanks for all…"

"Okay, see you later. Now go and please keep Aidan and Henry safe…", Josh smiled and Atlee left the room silently.

Josh sank back in his pillows.

Atlee took the same way to get back to the outer territories of Boston where Mother´s secret lair was lying. It was dark now but he crossed the dark field with no problems.

A strong smell of fresh broken soil hung in the air. It sent a shiver down his spine when it reminded him who was buried down there. Not the long time gone indifferent scent when once Suren was grounded there. Over the months and years the smell of moved earth had subsided to nothing within all the other scents the nature provided him with.

So would be with the newly occupied grave when he won´t get Aidan out of there fast.

Vampires sometimes dissolved into time and space by fate.

His silent steps led him into the building that looked abandoned and old. He stopped shortly, inhaling the human scent that came from the staircase. It was the same like before so the guardian hadn´t been exchanged. Atlee nodded slightly and went down the steps.

The guardian lifted his head, glad for a bit of difference in his boring job. Maybe the vampire would talk to him a while.

"Hi!" The human smiled at him, his eyes questioning. This Dutch was sometimes strange but at least he wasn´t the most threatening one among them. The older Dutch, especially the Elders were much more conscious with their role and status they inhabited. Contrary to the common Dutch behavior the acted like royal predators, taking the right to kill while feeding.

Something that was generally not accepted but Mother had to keep a silent balance so she tolerated as long as the community was not in danger to be revealed among humans. The Dutch were a powerful part of the vampire world.

Atlee smiled at him. He was determined to inform Henry about the plan he had set up with this Josh. And the human guard would be suspicious when he went into the room again. So let´s take some time for small talk, he thought. Before he would manipulate the man into sleep.

"Hi, what´s up?"

"Nothing happened in here with your captive…he´s silent and calm…" the guard began.

"What else are you expecting from a hanging man?" Atlee smiled in a way he pretended to look he was satisfied with the fact that Henry was going to suffer for a real long time, by those providing him with the pleasure to torture him over a long period.

"For what is he punished?", the guard directed into the cellar with his thumb, glad to have some distraction now from the boring job of guarding a nearly lifeless and bound captive. Not that he really felt anything for him, but he was curious about the reason. News always satisfied the heart.

This was his job. He worked for the vampires because they paid him for like any other job and he found all these blood-drinkers proud and self-satisfied. Those with more influence in the community were mixing up themselves in politics, eager to raise their influence and finally inhabiting a leading position.

He simply kept himself out of their range wherever possible. It didn´t matter what he got be paid for in the end as long he would not have to torture or to kill himself.

Atlee knew pretty well with which kind of a human being he had to do here. No problem to distract and finally manipulate him for his purposes.

"He tried to kill two of the guards, so leading Aidan to the place where Mother sleeps and to enable him to stake her! But they caught him and Mother decided, instead of staking him, to let him hang on the hook for her vengeance…" Atlee grinned devilish; "…and that´s much more worse than to release him by killing him simply. He would learn to know what it means to arouse Mother´s revenge and wrath!" He laughed.

"So he´s a very important captive?!"

"Important is simply that he´ll stay alive as long as possible and for this she ordered me to keep him alive by feeding him small amounts of blood. Enough to prevent him from dying early…"

"Ugh…that´s it! Did you know him before…?

"No. Normally I live over there in Pennsylvania so I don´t stay in direct contact with single vampires in Boston. I came over here with the Elders for the Council, nothing more… Heard only he´s a childe of Aidan Waite and once played a role before Suren was grounded. Then he was banished and reaccepted into the family currently. And that´s the way he thanked for it…! Spit on his ass…!" Atlee spit onto the ground.

"What are you going to do now? You´d been out long tonight…", the guard went on when his curiosity was satisfied a bit but not totally.

"I was hungry and I had to go to Boston for my fill. This place…" , his arm moved around in a circle; "Is so far from civilized area that I had to take a bus to go into the city for feeding…" Atlee shrugged his shoulders. "And now I´m back…"

The man nodded and rose from his seat.

"Could you…? I mean…damn, I´m a human and have to go for the pee box! Can you take over for a short time so I can get rid of piss without damn pissin´ on the floor…?" he mumbled. His face looked tensed as he seemed to fight with his bladder and Atlee couldn´t hide a smile.

"That´s the fortune with immortality! No pissing, no shit! You simply drink and drink and drink…", he bent nearer in a threatening way, his fangs bared and the man shrunk back a bit, his tensed face overlaid with a hint of fear.

Damn, he hated it when those creatures crept in too near!

"I…I thought you…you ate before!" Sweat appeared on his forehead but he didn´t want to step back more. Don´t show them you´re damn afraid!

He wasn´t aware he gave off the scent of fear like a trail of blood.

When Atlee found himself satisfied by the human´s reaction he bent back with an excusing smile.

"Don´t worry! I´m sated tonight!"

The sigh of release from the human was more than an answer.

"I´ll take over for you. Go before you´re gonna watering your pants!", he grinned and the guard left, eager to leave the range of the Dutch.

Damn! I hate them!, he rumbled soundlessly within his throat.

Atlee looked after him for a second then he opened the door and entered the make shift prison. The strong smell of semi rotten bodies hanging from the ceiling mixed with smell of the still living captives caught him intensely with a cold grip.

He looked over to Henry. Couldn´t make out a movement from afar. He walked nearer, over to the place where Henry was hanging motionless on that damn hook. His eyes moved over the face and the body, where the sharp tip of the steel hook was protruding from Henry´s chest.

"Henry!...HENRY!", he called him.

The vampire didn´t answer and Atlee felt for a pulse with trembling fingers.

What, if Henry had died? Without him it would be nearly impossible to free Aidan from his grave. And Mother…Mother would punish him for not caring for her precious prey.

The skin was cold and…moist. Sweat covered.

Would Henry have been dead, his skin would have been dry and shriveled.

"HENRY?", he called him again.

No answer.

Atlee carefully touched Henry´s face, his thumbs moving over the sweat covered face that was unnaturally warm. Like…like in…fever.

"Henry? Listen to me! Can you hear me?"

A hard cough, tensed and pain ridden answered his ministrations. Not good, but Henry was still alive.

"Henry! Can you open your eyes? Look at me! Please, Henry! For Aidan´s sake!", he begged.

A moan came from within split lips and eyes, black as the night opened to narrow slits. Henry let out a new fit of coughs follow by deep moaning.

The coughs shaking him to the base, whirling fire was running through him under the attack.

"Grosser God…" Atlee stammered and he tried to stabilize Henry a bit.

Saliva was dripping from the corners of his mouth, colored like rose petals from wild roses. For sure and there was no doubt the hook had perforated his lungs. Otherwise he would have been paraplegic when the spine was broken by the hook. Henry still could move his head and his limbs even when he lacked of strength.

"Grosser God…your skin is so warm…" Atlee whispered. "Like you got the damn fieberfrieseln*" (* fit of fever)

Henry moaned when he tried to lift his head to look at Atlee. A hand cupped his chin, lifted it very careful a bit so he could look into Atlee´s sorrowful eyes. He felt the urge to let his eyelids fall close again but he fought it. His tongue dry and it felt like a dry rubber ball in his mouth with a remaining taste of iron like stained blood.

What was Atlee talking about? His mind fought with his all over excruciating pain. Pain. Pain… he must…He needed…

Henry sucked in air. Fought his burning lips to move, to form a whisper, nearly inaudible but Atlee heard it.

"Gi…gimme…!" Aidan had… He had provided him with… With what? His mind cringed when he tried to remember the word. The word of release that would end his agony.

"What? What, Henry? Water?" Atlee tried to help him.

Damn! He needed no water! Not first and foremost! What he needed was…

…morphine.

His mind went numb, drifting, dreaming of the sweet bite of the needle and Morpheus, the soft and loving god of sleep, flooding his veins, his body. All pain gone. Gone to nowhere.

"Henry! Stay with me!" a voice forced him back into the excruciating reality of a dusty cellar room and the cold fire of steel in his chest.

He looked at Atlee, forced his lips to move and finally pressed out the one word he hoped on like a drowning man clinging to a straw.

"Mo…morphine… Gim´me…plea…ssse" The plea a hiss finally.

Atlee swallowed hard. A knot in his throat that was not willing to go. He swallowed. Licked his suddenly dry lips and whispered:

"I can´t get to it, Henry! Oh my dear God! I know what´s going on and you´re for sure in a damn kind of fever or whatever you´ll call it… But the stuff is locked in the safe at Halloway´s! I can´t get to it. For no reason in the world they would let me come near to it. Not since Aidan had taken the box with him for you before…" Atlee felt so sorry for Henry.

He knew that the small box had been stolen from Suren´s room the very moment the guard handed it over to Aidan to enable him to get Henry out when he had been skinned.

Henry moaned. A sound so deep and so tortured, mixed with rage that it shot a hot bolt through Atlee´s heart.

He needed it so urgently. His mind drifted back to the bedroom, the small nightstand beside the large double bed. The box had been there! He had seen it there. At Josh´s!

"Josh!...Home…Get it! Josh…Josh will…give it to you! He…he knows me!" Henry didn´t know where the strength came from to press out the words. Strength of despair."

"Josh is not at home, Henry. He´s in the hospital. He himself is injured. He got shot and is a patient in his own working place! I met him there, spoke to him…"

The expression of hopelessness that swept over Henry´s face was disturbing.

The door opened and the guardian appeared again after he finished his bodies urgencies.

"You are in here! I didn´t found you outside…", he indicated the empty floor outside.

Atlee turned around, his eyes bled black suddenly. All smiling had vanished from his sorrow stricken face as he spoke.

His tone strong with demand.

"I have to do in here as you learn to know. All is safe with the captive. You´re really tired now and you go back to your seat outside where you will take a little sleep as long as I´m inside here! When I´ll be leaving I´ll wake you. Mother won´t complain! Go now!", he demanded and the man´s view became glassy as he turned around and left for his seat where he fell asleep immediately.

Atlee´s eye color switched back to normal and his fangs retracted when he turned back to the limb shape of Henry. His heart full of sorrow. By any means he felt pity with Henry. Maybe because he was the son of the man/vampire whom he thanked his life to. Aidan had saved his life from the hunting werewolves. And left the honor of killing one of them to him irrespective the fact it had been Aidan who shot the wolf.

He hadn´t much to do with Henry but in a way he couldn´t explain to himself he felt more than interested in the young one. His intelligence, his cunning manner, loyalty and self control when it came to feeding were abilities he often missed in others of his kind.

He looked into Henry´s face where the bruises had become violet yellow. The abrasions didn´t bleed but they didn´t disappear also. A sign how much his tortured body was in urgent need for blood. Blood to which he won´t have access again until tomorrow. Therefore Mother had cared for.

The thought at Mother made him spit on the ground.

His hand moved upwards, cupped Henry´s chin and lifted his face softly. The eyes opened to black slits, looked into his own.

"Henry…I know what you need but I have no access to morphine. And I think so, Josh doesn´t have too! He can´t simply steel it in the hospital without risking to lose his job and going to fall under penalty by law!

"You…you can…" Henry´s lips trembled when he mumbled; "…you…go to…home. Plea…ssse!" Breathing. Pause. Breathing. "Can´t…nmore. Please, Atlee!" His eyes on fire. His voice so desperate. The following words choking. "Or…or…stake me!"

"Oh my God! Henry! You have to live! For you! For Aidan! Don´t ever forget this! Aidan needs you and we will get you out of here! I promised you!"

He understood him all too well, knew what Henry was begging for: Stake me or tilt my pain! He wanted him to get any morphine, had told him something about it that had to do with Josh´s home. For sure when Aidan had taken him there, what seemed to be certain, maybe the stuff was still in this house… But Atlee didn´t know where Josh was living. He couldn´t break into the house without an invite. Would go crispy before he would have the chance to reach a box of morphine wherever it was hidden inside.

"I don´t know where Josh lives in and I´m uninvited! I would die without a chance to get to it, Henry!

„A…ask. Him.", Henry choked. His lips trembling. Tears dripped from his eyes and he let out a deep moan. The pain in his body must have been unbearable now. Much more worse than what he went through after skinning because that didn´t last that long…

Atlee bent nearer, his hands rose and he carefully peeled back the remains of the jeans jacket that Henry was wearing. He touched the edges of the wound where the tip of that damned hook was protruding from Henry´s chest. When he pulled his fingertips back they were soaked with a mixture of blood and a yellowish liquid. He brought his fingertip to his nose, suspicious, and caught a scent he was afraid of…

Pus.

That damn wound had gone into inflammation. Henry´s body was fighting with an infection. Weakened like he was, it would only be a matter of time before Henry would go into a kind of septic shock.

Vampires would for sure survive it if the body got a chance to heal himself, but that was far from what Mother intended for him. She was going to let him die as slowly and as agonizing as possible.

Royals should show mercy.

The better if she would have staked him immediately.

But mercy wasn´t on the table for poor Henry.

"Ask him! Henry, I´m…", his voice went down to a whisper. So low only Henry would be able to hear him; "I´m coming directly from the hospital! Josh is hurt and he can´t go home the next two weeks… And I´m afraid I don´t have any access to his home…" Atlee whispered.

He saw the face fell. Despair. Desperate. Agony. Disturbing hunger for blood and the waves of pain that were running through the tortured body.

Henry felt so desperate, now that all his once risen hope died with the words and the sad expression in Atlee´s face.

Two weeks!

He wouldn´t even stand a few more hours with the excruciating pain in his upper body. Not to think about days or even…weeks!

"He…help. Me. Or…stake. ME!" Henry gasped.

That wasn´t a plea anymore! Henry demanded for a clear decision. He still wasn´t afraid of final death anymore. Not now that he knew what Mother had in mind for him. Everything would be more relief as long as it didn´t mean to be hanging here from that hook for an indefinite time until his body would finally break and release him into his death. He had warned Aidan about his plan, had tried to get him off that freaking idea that he could free them all from her oppression. But he wasn´t to be stopped and so finally he had given in to wrap that scarf around a tree to lead Aidan to Mother´s lair.

And now there were both paying the price for it.

If Aidan would be still alive. But he wouldn´t be for long anymore. Not if Atlee would have the guts to show mercy and stake him. If Aidan would live he would find the time to grieve for him. He had always felt a special connection to his maker that once had begun when he was a medic in WW1 and had met Aidan for the first time. Some strange kind of fascination that was grounded in the fact that a nearly dead man healed with preternatural speed from wounds no human would survive. When Aidan went wild and killed the whole staff and but one patient in an attempt to hide his secret among the humans, Henry had felt attracted to him in a way he couldn´t even definite the less explain.

Atlee breathed sharply, looked at his fingertips for a moment and thought about the possibilities he would have. After a short moment he came to the decision that the only option he had would be to go back to the hospital, urge Josh out of the bed and convince him into going home to get access to the needed medicine.

"Okay, Henry…" Atlee sighed; "I will go back to the hospital! I don´t have any clue how to manage it but by any way I´ll get you the stuff because I can´t get you free NOW!"

Henry forced his eyes open and the Yes that followed was inaudible but Atlee read it from his bloodied lips. He nodded silently, turned around and left the cellar as fast as possible. The stench from the cellar seemed to stick to him like glue, long after he had left this place of mortal and immortal death.

Sun was nearly rising when Atlee reached the hospital again. He sped upstairs and was hiding in a corner until the nurse left the room where Josh was lying.

Josh looked more than astonished when he saw the Dutch entering his room again.

"You forgot something?", Josh asked casually.

Atlee shook his head no and grabbed for a small chair, pulled it near the bed and sat down in it so he was able to speak in a low voice.

"What for?", Josh asked and his brows knitted.

"I gonna need your help, Josh…", he began.

"I thought we got that through with! Like I remind we came up with a plan how and when we´ll be going to free Aidan and Henry…" He was going to be mixed up with this Henry again, Josh thought. Every case he had to do with Aidan´s needs ended up with Henry being involved into it since the day Aidan brought the vampire childe in. Josh sighed thinking about it, but he reigned his temper in and tried to keep calm.

"What kinda help?" His eyes fixing the Dutch vampire who stroked his red golden hair with the left hand before he went on. He sounded kind of uncertain.

"Uhm…I´m sorry and I want to apologize before you´ll become…", he stopped, sighed and went on; "It´s a problem…"

"Guess you decided you don´t want to be involved in an uprising against your so called Mother-Monster! Didn´t you? Well! I should have expected that you pull back. Aidan told me once that…" Josh shrugged his shoulders; "…but don´t let talk about it for now…"

Atlee knew that Josh was going to mention his cowardly behavior when it came to the werewolf pack hunt. Inwardly he shrunk back. That case stuck to him since then like dried cow poop. He sighed, looked more determined and went on finally.

"The problem is with Henry! He´s in such a terrible condition. He´s suffering from excruciating pain and I doubt that I can keep him alive long enough when I have nothing for him to tilt his agonizing pain. He´s on the border to give in into dying… Additionally…I don´t know how to call this in case of a vampire…Uhm, his wounds are…kind of infected. Would he be a mortal I would say it´s…pus…"

Josh knitted his brows skeptically.

"You mean liquid soaking from the wounds beyond blood? What color?"

"Light yellow, thick liquid of a bad scent…"

"Shit! Looks like fuckin´ pus! I´m afraid you´re right with it.", Josh cursed. The imagination of a vampire with infected wounds…he felt a cold shudder running down his spine. These creatures seemed to have more in common with mortals as was usually supposed. But they were, like Josh understood it from his medical base, beings that were transformed, generating, descending from human beings. They breathed, they fed, they could bleed and they could die under certain circumstances. By all means they were kind of living organisms with special factors. Josh had always denied the possibility of a curse when it came to werewolves despite what Nora said.

Infection.

No curse.

Same with Aidan. And Henry.

"`kay! So let´s say he´s gonna suffering from wound infections…And I thought them resistant to all kind of diseases…"

"Normally we are! But Henry is hurt. He lacks of blood in general and he´s growing more and more weak, so his body gets difficulties with normal working. Currently nothing is normal!"

"Your kind is going to astonish me over and over again! I´m used to vampires by Aidan, I´ve seen Henry at his worst…but that´s a new problem. I´m glad you´re not that freaking strange like a being from outer space. Some comforting parallels…" Josh grinned slightly than he went back to earnest.

"Henry has told me something…I´m not quite sure but what I could decipher from his dull mumbling…he spoke of Aidan having some morphine at home…that came from Halloway´s. I know that some of the stuff went lost during the events around…Suren´s…revenge…"

Josh stared at him in disbelief. What the hell did this Dutch know from the skinning and the fact that when Aidan took Henry home he had stolen the morphine, using the chaos around a makeshift medieval punishment. Josh had seen the box on the nightstand and it definitely didn´t come from the hospital because it was from a pharmaceutical company they didn´t use.

"Okay, guy! I want you to tell me why the hell you know so much about the…", his throat constricted at the thought of it… "the skinning and the further…around! Tell me or I swear you I won´t cooperate furthermore!"

"I would be able to force you into cooperation!", Atlee warned him, reminding him of common vampire skills. Manipulation was one of them.

"That won´t work on me! I´m werewolf and I´m used to vampires! Don´t forget!", Josh shot back in the same tone.

But Atlee knew he was only going to lose when he forced the decision onto Josh. He needed Josh to help Henry without so much as a large peculiarity. So he gave in.

"I had been at the House when Suren took her revenge. I heard that morphine disappeared with Aidan taking Henry home. So I supposed that he had taken it with him what´s quite understandable. I would have done the same for a friend… I kept silent about it. Nothing more. The leftover I learned from Henry when also I´m not certain if I understood everything… He´s going more and more worse…at the edge of unconsciousness always…"

"And now your little brain has put the parts together and provided you with the idea that you simply have to get access to my home to get the stuff!", Josh growled.

_ posted on BEING fans 2012-08-08 _

**_Insert additional part Atlee going for the stuff from Josh´s home:_**

"Yes…I kind of thought so…", Atlee confessed with a sad smile. He had no clue how to manage it if not compelling the human into accompany him to go home for the morphine. He needed one to invite him! Not knowing where the stuff was lying, searching a house for the right room and then for the hidden medicine…he won´t have the slightest chance to manage it, irrespective of vampire speed, before he would dissolve into dust…

"But…", Josh grinned broadly, waved around with his hand; "…you´re quite sure you didn´t forget that I´m nailed to that bed at least the next two weeks like the doctor said!"

"I´m fully aware of the fact and I thought over how to solve this problem…You possibly have a good friend of yours or a girl friend who lives with you as a kind of owner…?"

"Sorry but I´m the only living mortal owner in there!..." Josh shrugged his shoulders and could see how the hope for a simple solution fell from his face like rain from a tree.

"Then it becomes much more difficult. I...we...uhm, I need the stuff for Henry! Please help me. I´m afraid I can´t keep him alive over a longer time without it...he is going worse every time I go for him..." Aidan´s voice low and a plea.

Josh looked at him. He licked his lips just to make time before he would have to answer. He wasn´t fond of Aidan bringing Henry in. But just it happened and for a moment he remembered Aidan´s tormented facial expression when he got him by the fact what had happened in his house. That feeding that had gone terrible wrong. In Aidan´s face he had seen all the inner turmoil and it wasn´t to blame Henry for the cases of death that occurred in his home. Aidan had vehemently defended his son when they finally had a discussion about it and Josh had forced an explanation from him...

Josh thought about how to act. How Atlee getting in without him going crispy. Sally was a ghost, no mortal owner. She couldn´t invite him in and Josh got an idea. He didn´t know if it could work and the idea itself was somewhat crazy. But crazy ideas often had made it! Josh scratched his head with the fingers, shook it no, then he looked at Atlee.

"I don´t know if it´ll work but I´m afraid you´ll have to test it out. Because I can´t go home... And I have definitely no experience if it´ll work. Never tried it before...", Josh mumbled.

"What do you mean?"

"I´ll give you a written invitation...like a document...maybe it´ll do..!" Josh didn´t look all too happy but he had no other idea now. A document of invitation. What to d with it? Put it on the threshold in hope it would break the invisible bar that kept an uninvited vampire outside and finally was leading to his destruction. The sell-over of the house that made home for the orphans worked not by rational effects. It was kind of magic. Magic of names and signatures.

"Wait a moment..." Josh grabbed for his cell phone and dialed a number. At the other end a female voice answered. Atlee didn´t know her but for sure she was a trustworthy person when Josh took her by.

"Hi, Zoe! What do you know about the...the magic of written documents?"

"Written documents? What do you mean, Josh?", Zoe asked a bit astonished.

"Uhm...if I write and sign an invitation? Will it do to let one in into my house unharmed if I´m not there to invite him in personally? Like when another person reads it in order to fulfill my will when I´ve him instructed to do so...", Josh tried to explain his idea.

"You sure what you´re going to do? For whom. It will work but not that simple...", Zoe warned him.

"Then explain it to me! I´ll need it. Him. For...for a friend..."

"Wait a moment. I´ll come over to you. I can´t explain that by phone..." The line clicked off and Josh laid the cell on his bed.

"Zoe will come over to us..."

"Who´s Zoe?"

"A...a special kind of woman. She..she can see...souls. Ghosts."

"A medium?"

"Kind of. She helps souls to transfer into new born children...", Josh tried to explain it but wasn´t sure if Atlee understood it in the full sense of its meaning.

"A soul-shifter...?"

"Maybe that does.". Josh looked a bit helpless but the situation itself was weird enough. It didn´t take a long time, only a few minutes until Zoe had find her way into Josh´s room.

"Uh! Here you´re. The nurse told me!", her voice changed to a deep tone, imitating the voice of the staff nurse; "Oh yeah, Mr. Nurse Levison! A real troublemaker. I would rather put him in the closet instead, with his ass poked with a whole bundle of syringes, full with narcotics!"

"A Schnickelfritz.", Atlee commented in a dry tone. Zoe stared at him.

"A what?" Her tone went to normal.

"Schnickelfritz. A man or child who makes trouble..."

Josh smiled; "I begged you not to make use of that dialect of yours. I´m not used to Pennsylvanian Dutch..."

"Uh hu! He is...", Zoe looked at him more closely; " Amish. I should have seen it when I came in...", she smiled. "Your kind of dressing. That plain-and-simple style."

"Not exactly.", Atlee corrected without any further explanation.

"Guess you don´t even imagine what he is...comes from.", Josh grunted.

"So Mr...", she began.

"Atlee."

"Uh. Mr Atlee is from Ohio or rather Ontario? Canada?" Zoe went on airily.

"No, I´m from Pennsylvania. I live near York..."

"York. The Amish Counties." She looked at his red golden hair; "If you didn´t tell me I could have taken you for coming from the Scots or Ireland. That color of hair...", she smiled. Then her smile died when she felt something about the man beside her. Her face became earnest when she tried to decipher the hint of a feeling. But it went off as fast as it had come.

She squared her shoulders and turned to Josh.

"Okay. Explain me please what you have in mind. A written invitation? I´m no secretary nor lawyer. Why don´t you simply write an invitation and handle it over to a neighbor if you want anybody have permission to enter your home without getting trouble with the police as long as you aren´t still at home? What´s so difficult about it?" She looked at Atlee.

"I need it for him!", Josh directed to the Dutch.

"Then write it..."

"That´s the crux! I´m not at home to invite him in and...if I doesn´t he...he will die or anything like that. Go crispy or any equal shit, for heaven´s sake..."

"Go. Crispy. You mean...crispy like a roasted chicken on the BQ? If he enters with a burning match and a can of gasoline. Maybe.", Zoe shrugged her shoulders, her brows knitted and then the feeling, only a hint, came back. This time it didn´t disappear.

"WHAT is he?", she shrunk back a few steps, her index finger risen, directing onto Atlee.

"A vampire." Josh´s tone coldly.

"Vampire? What in between heaven and hell do you have to do with vampires?" She stared at him, her hand rose to her throat in a protective gesture and then she stared at Josh in disbelief. Disbelief in what he had tried to explain her with one word. Not trusting her own eyes despite the fact that she had a whole range of experience with the paranormal while helping souls of died persons to shift into the shell of a newborn baby. Connecting soul and body together to create a new circle of life to start...

"Zoe! I´m sorry. I thought you know what vampires are...", Josh began an excuse, but was interrupted by her.

"Sure I know! He´s undead. Better: turned by the blood. Immortal. Meant to have no soul. But I can feel a very old soul behind the surface! That´s what irritated me when I entered. The presence of a very old life that didn´t fit into the shape of the body. A kind of discrepancy that comes clear when it comes to vampires..." She breathed a few times, tried to relax.

She had felt that before when she had met Aidan during shifts. But therefore she wasn´t able to explain it. A strange feeling she couldn´t decipher exactly among all the other lives surrounding her. Young and old souls, growing, leaving, shifting... Too much energy in flow.

"Aidan! He is...Aidan Waite is a vampire! And you knew it all the time!" Zoe´s voice a mixture of anger and astonishment.

"Whoa!", she grabbed with one hand for her head, sat down on a chair that Atlee shoved into range.

She nodded slightly, let herself sank onto it.

"O..kay...That explains a lot. I´ve heard rumors that a vampire can´t enter a house without an invitation by a mortal inhabitant. But I didn´t know it to be that worse...Burning down to ashes alive..." She shook her head and went on: "But why does he need to have access to your house?", she looked straight at Josh who let his view sink down before he answered. His voice low.

"Aidan...he is...he needs help. They sealed him in...in a box...a coffin. Uh, not that you´re going to think he usually sleeps in a coffin like old Count Dracula! He´s hold captive, like a friend of him. And..Atlee has to go to my home because this friend is sick and the medicine he needs is at home..." No use to tell her they were talking morphine.

But that makes it difficult. A simple written permission won´t do. One has to do kind of...magic to break the spell that usually bars him from your home. To prevent him going crispy like you so eloquently stated, Josh."

"But who will do that..magic...?"

"I can do. If it´s really urgent that he gets this medicine, I can go with him to make the baring-spell inactive...Normally I don´t do magic. Much is evil you know and I will keep my soul clean. White. But if it´s done to help anybody in distress it can be done as a kind of white magic...", Zoe explained to Josh, her hands clamped together nervously.

"That you would do for me?", Atlee asked carefully.

"I do it for Josh, Atlee! Because he´s a friend of mine and I trust him with this.", Josh stated. Don´t give him the feeling he´s gonna lead this uprising crap, he thought. All trials with solving this case ends up with much more vampires going involved into it. My home is gonna become a four lane highway for every bloodsucker. First Aidan, than Bishop, than Henry and now Atlee. Maybe I should set an offer into the Boston Times where I´m offering free access and shelter to every vampire around who vows not to kill me or anybody else around. Got open a damn subsidiary from that Halloway´s!

"Much effort for a small box! I don´t even know how much of it is left over from the last...therapy. I didn´t control how much injections Aidan made to his so...his friend. Aidan is a nurse and he knows damn pretty well how to handle this stuff. I hope you can do injections, Atlee...", Josh looked at the Dutch.

"If you explain me please onto what I´ve to look for...I think, it should be no such problem..."

"You guys rather pierce skin with your...", Josh directed to his own canines; "...fangs." He grinned.

Zoe looked from one to the other, couldn´t hide a slight grin. But that couldn´t hide the fact that she was kind of reluctant when it came to trust such a being like Atlee. Point one: she had met him the first time. Point two: she had no practical experience with vampires despite the fact she had met Aidan at work. But his way of handling what he was, must not in general co-relate with Atlee´s way to exist, her mind warned her. When Aidan was tame up to some certain degree, Atlee would be simply incalculable.

"So…how do we go along with the invitation thing? I can imagine that Atlee is in urge with it like he explained me…"; Josh asked and looked over to Atlee; "You wanna go directly for it, right?"

"Yes. Henry..he is growing worse the longer I wait…If we would be able to go right now…the better. I don´t want to let him be waiting for long…"

"Okay! That´s an argument…So, Zoe can you please tell me what I shall do? I´m not in that kind of stuff…", he looked somewhat helpless at her, chewed his lower lip nervously.

"I brought in some paper and a pencil…So you simply write a formal invitation with his name…", she directed to Atlee; " Than the address of your house and your full name and your signature. So far it´s nothing other like a normal script. The rest I will do…Like I said before; it needs some white magic to get him in unharmed. And out again.", she smiled a bit.

"For getting him out, there´s to do some additional magic?", Josh asked suspiciously.

"No. I simply said so. Once the baring-spell is inactivated, he can enter and leave like he wants. The house will accept his right for access furthermore…" Zoe explained and looked over to Atlee.

Then she bent nearer to Josh, not sure if Atlee wouldn´t understand her though, and whispered: "Are you sure you really want to give him access? Once the spell is broken, he´ll have access unlimited as long as you won´t uninvite him again formally onto the threshold…What for you would have to be at home personally! A written denial won´t work! Now you still have time to decide if you want to let him in! He´s a vampire and I don´t know if you still know him enough to…trust him…Don´t forget, Josh!"

Josh nodded and sighed slightly.

Henry was Aidan´s son. Aidan won´t be happy to learn that his friend would do nothing to help his own blood. Josh was reluctant about the fact up to which degree he was going to be involved deeper and deeper into this world of vampires. But going together and being caught together was to he hanging together…Old sentence. He was to be involved with them since the very moment he met Aidan the first time who was going to offer him the possibility for a better life away from Ithaca. It had been Aidan who had his fingers in the pie, and his good reputation at Boston Suffolk County, to make it possible that Josh Levison was to be taken as an employee. With his start at medical school he made a very well educated nurse in the eyes of the management. He was in Aidan´s debt.

Aidan was his best friend and their friendship worked, against all commonly spread odds. You can´t hang around and live together with vampires without getting involved into their world, so strange this world would ever be. He himself was a strange one among humans. He with this werewolf-thing.

Zoe saw the expression of stern concentration in Josh´s face. Then he slowly nodded. His face rose and he looked at Zoe.

"Okay! I´ll do it! Give me the paper and that pencil of yours. I write and you are going to do the rest! What more can happen after all as that my home is becoming a four lane highway drive in for vampires?" He let out a painful smile and took up the paper to write. Zoe placed a breakfast board over his lap and Josh began to write with slightly shaking fingers. He bit his lower lip and when he had ended, he gave the document to Zoe. She controlled it if everything was the way it had to be.

"That looks very well, Josh. Thank you…"

"You´re welcome. Now that I have finished the request, I think you can start…", he mumbled.

"The keys, please. We need the keys, Josh otherwise you want us to break the locks…", she said.

"Not that! The door is of wood and glass and it´s old. Please spare it from any physical force."

She looked on the address." House number 3638.."

"You can´t miss it. It looks old and is a very slim one… Go to the first floor. The bedroom with the double bed. Maybe anywhere in the nightstand…or he has put it in the medicine cabinet in the closet.. You have to search for. Last time I saw the box, it was on the nightstand when Henry had left the bedroom…"

"Okay, we will find it, Josh. I guess our Mr. Atlee Dutch does not own a car or do you have parked your horse in the lane beside the hospital?"

"No. But you have a car?"

"Yes. I think we should go now… Henry? Right? Is it his name?" Atlee nodded. "Okay, Henry should not have to wait too long when he´s ill." She looked at Josh; "We are going now. I bring back the keys when I´m back from our ride. Is that quite okay for you, Josh?"

"Yeap! It´s okay, Zoe. Have a nice day…"

"You too and thanks a lot!", Atlee smiled at Josh and the human nodded. He looked tired.

But by far not so exhausted like Henry…

Now he was in two men´s debt, it shot through Atlee´s mind.

_3638 Mayford, Boston_

Zoe drove the car through the thick traffic and after half an hour they reached the house. Zoe looked on the number that was hovering above the door over a row of stairs. 3638. She drove into the narrow alley beside the building that was cuddling itself to the side of a larger brick building, stopped the engine and lent back into the seat for a moment. She took a deep breath and shot Atlee a look. He was sitting on the passenger´s seat.

Behind her or beside her. Both positions were to give him advantage if he was going to attack her while she was driving through the street. When did he feed last time, she asked herself. But she couldn´t have locked him in into the luggage trunk.

"Okay…here we are. I´ll go upstairs with Josh´s invitation and you will have to wait downstairs. I do the magic while unlocking the door and when I call for you, you can enter safely.", she explained.

He nodded.

He had no clue of magic. What, if she was only pretending to make the house´s entrance passable but truly the spell was still active in an attempt to kill him when he was finally inside.?

He had to put his trust into her. Into her honest intentions. So he looked upstairs when she climbed the stairs and stopped in front of the door. Zoe inserted the key into the lock and after two turns the door snapped open. It looked so normal. Like one coming home from work. Then he heard her voice, low and in a melodic tone like singing a song. He couldn´t decipher the words but believed them to be Latin. For magic of any kind mostly Latin was used as the universal language of the paranormal. When he heard Josh Levison and the address he was sure she was reading the invitation to the house like to an owner. Then she bent down and put the document onto the threshold, face down. She was singing, grabbed for the paper and moved it around, upwards following the wooden frame of the door, over the upper opening and down on the other side. Then she entered with an old stylish and very formal bow.

Atlee waited.

She waved him upstairs and he climbed upstairs. Under the threshold he stopped and made one first and careful step inside.

Nothing happened.

"Enter free of your free will. I invite you in. Keep well and leave safe…", she intoned with a calm and serious voice. Her right hand grabbed for his and she pulled him inside carefully. "Come on! It´s okay…It´s safe…", she smiled when he stepped inside and tensed. His face went stone and he hesitated, didn´t dare to breath.

Nothing happened.

No explosion, no burning heat, no feeling of bursting into flames and the skin peeling back from the bones. Nothing.

Atlee let out a deep breath of relief and looked upstairs where the bedroom was to be. He directed to the staircase.

"Josh said it would be upstairs...in a bedroom. Have you ever been here before?" Maybe Zoe was a usual guest in the house.

"No. Never before. I think Josh trusts you a lot with it that he let you in when he´s not at hand..."

"I thought you know the rooms better than me...", he smiled a bit and took the first stairs, Zoe followed him. Suddenly he heard her gasp sharply and she grabbed for the rail to take hold. She bent her head and gasped, her eyes wide. Atlee turned his head to her, stared at the woman who suddenly looked terrified.

"What´s up?" he knitted his brows; "Are you gonna need any help...you ain´t looking well..." His voice concerned. Zoe put her hands on her hips, rose her head and tilted it to the side like listening to something.

"There is...cold. I feel...pain. Shock. Fear...like from one being surprised...endless surprise..."

"Do you...hear anything...", he directed to her ear. She looked very tensed, concentrated. Shook her head no.

"No. No voices. Only images. A woman...she fell down the stairs. A man...he yelled at her. They had a dispute and he pushed her downstairs. OMG. It´s Danny! He killed her! He is the killer. No accident like once supposed. There´s still dark energy here from the attack...I can feel it!" Zoe grabbed for her head, covering her temples and she made a step upstairs. Then another. The first segment than the following stairs until she reached the first floor. She let out a deep breath of relief. Atlee looked at her and went through the hall until he reached the bedroom. He opened the door. A large bed stood at the wall beside a window and the curtains were closed. He switched the light on under the ceiling. He pulled the nightstand open and his hand went through the belongings. After a few seconds he found a small box and a bag with needles and syringes. Atlee took them and shoved them into the pocket of his jacket.

"Did you find what you were searching for, Atlee?", she asked.

"Yes...Now I have to go back to Henry...Thank you very much."

"I can drive you to him...No problem. You have no car and..."

"It´s far from here I suppose, Zoe."

"It´ll be better I drive you over there. It´ll be way faster as when you take a bus...", she said with a smile. Atlee nodded a Yes.

"But I can´t allow you to go to Henry...", he began.

"But I´m a nurse! If he´s ill I can examine him and maybe Josh has an idea what will help. He started going to the medical school before he came to Boston..."

"You´re so kind but there will be other vampires around and you can´t come with me when I go to him, Zoe..." His voice became more intense, compelling. His eyes bled black and she saw the tips of fangs appearing: the thing she imagined him to look when it comes to vampires.

"Don´t try your vampire tricks on me. That won´t work on me!"

Zoe and Atlee drove down the road. He explained her the way and she tried to find it in her navigator but the place wasn´t known by the system.

"Guess you have to tell me where I shall drive. That wrecked system doesn´t find it!", she cursed and frustrated she shut off the useless navi.

"The place is a very abandoned one…", Atlee smiled, " only known to a few persons. You will have to stop in a distance from it and I´ll go for what I have to do…"

"But I can…I mean…if this Henry is ill, maybe I can take a look for him and Josh will…", she insisted. When the man was so ill she didn´t take it why the hell that Dutch was so reluctant about taking a closer watch onto him, for better help. What, if this Atlee wasn´t quite sure about from what this man was suffering? He seemed to have not the slightest medical education and a false diagnosis could led into larger problems for the patient. She knew that the Amish normally cured themselves by their old methods and didn´t like to participate in doctors and modern medicine. But possibly letting a person die because of this, instead of putting the patient into a hospital… God, she was a nurse and felt some responsibility for everyone who needed help…

She drove into a road Atlee directed to.

"I suppose we´ll drive to your friend and we´ll go together and if he needs further help I´ll tell Josh. It´s simple and I have told Josh that we need some time. He wouldn´t wonder about…", she began again in an attempt to convince him into being careful.

Atlee looked at her and his voice became demanding.

"No! You´ll have to wait!" His eyes suddenly much darker than she had them in mind. Uhm,that guy is reddish-blond, his eyes should be green or light blue, she thought. Can´t be that bad light in the car… Zoe shook her head slightly and out of the corner of her eye she saw his canines looking longer and sharper. Uh hu! Gotten it! He changes his appearance with going vampire! Black eyes and fangs extended by will, I suppose… Shall be careful. Don´t want his fangs going into my throat cause I´m not in biting…

"Why do you hesitate, Atlee?", she asked him suddenly, her face concerned and determined. "Tell me!"

"Henry only needs the medicine, nothing more. He´s kind of used to it…no problem, Zoe! If there are any problems growing, I´ll tell you or Josh! Don´t worry!", Atlee insisted, his voice dark and with a convincing timbre he normally used onto victims/donors.

Used to it! What into heaven or hell could anyone going to be used to hanging from a damn butcher´s hook? Even not a vampire! And Aidan´s son would die earlier or later if they wouldn´t find a way to get him out of that torture… He understood that woman all too well. She was a nurse and trained to care for sick persons. But for nothing in the world he could let her near the cellar. Mother and the guards would directly become suspicious or the guards would kill them all on demand. He could not explain it to her, even when she accepted him to be a vampire. These scientific educated persons were astonishing in general: Don´t shriek back even from the most unusual, most uncommon; like beings normally called for monsters…

"When Henry gets the medicine it´ll be okay! Simply! No reason to worry about!", he assured her in a much more softer tone.

"O…kay!? If you say so…but if there are problems, tell us! We´ll help him…", Zoe nodded slightly and watched at him more closely. His eyes were normal again, his teeth or…fangs?...retracted. Any other than her should have thought to be fallen prey to a play of lights or a hallucination.

When they reached a corner Atlee ordered her to stop.

"I´ll leave you here, Zoe. Drive back to Josh. I´ll take care of the rest.", he smiled convincingly and got out of the car.

"But…", she started from the driver´s side.

"You´ll drive home well. Thank you and a special thank to your friend Josh. Tell him, it all went well. Good night!", he waved to her and stepped into the narrow road.

Zoe saw him disappearing into the dark path. She shook her head and turned the car to drive back to the hospital.

"Did you see him? Did you see Henry?", Josh asked her when she came back to his room, stepped beside his bed and reached him the keys.

"No! Atlee...he told me to drive back to you. He meant to be sure he could handle this with him...", Zoe didn´t sound all too convinced but the Dutch had warned her to stay away from the place. Other vampires around, maybe hostile to her. She wasn´t in hunting.

"Why did you let him send you away, Zoe? If anything happens to Henry...oh my God...Aidan would gonna kill me! You can´t even imagine..."

"What is that about? Who´s that Henry that he´s so important to Aidan?"

"He´s more than a friend to him. Aidan kind of...adopted him. He made him...his son..." Not necessary to explain her the whole story despite the fact that she had seen Atlee and knew what he was.

"Aidan...you mean...Aidan Waite has a son? I don´t believe it! He never told me!", she pushed her hands onto her hips.

"Henry is not his natural son. He adopted him. Kind of...", Josh mumbled. "That´s the reason why he cares so much about him! You understand...?"

"Oh yeah! I have my babies...and he has a son! I thought to know him but I must confess that he´s going to astonish me!"

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter 3 Night without hope..._

When Atlee entered the cellar the guardian stepped aside.

"Feeding time?" the man grinned when he saw the bag in Atlee´s hand. The Dutch nodded, his face a grim mask.

"Go out and wait outside until I´m ready with him!", Atlee ordered and the guardian left the room. Atlee went nearer to the dangling form of Henry. When he reached him, he looked into the face of the young vampire.

"Henry! Henry...?" Atlee touched the temple and eyes opened to black narrow slits. A moaning came out of the lips. "I got the morphine for you..." he whispered. With swift movements he filled a syringe and lifted Henry´s face, carefully grabbing him by the chin. Atlee shot him the morphine into the jugular vein, felt Henry shivering when the analgetic flooded into his system. "It´ll be better soon...for a while at least..."

"Sta...stake...me..." Henry choked, his eyes black.

"No! I won´t let you die...you have to be strong now! Aidan is waiting for you..." He opened the slim tube of the transfusion bag and lifted it to Henry´s lips. Better he would drink before the morphine was going to nail him to the ground. "Eat! It´s not much but I´ll provide you with more secretly..."

Henry was hesitating. Feeding meant to strengthen him a bit, reducing his pain for a time, but it would also keep him alive. Alive instead of simply dying...ending his torment, from which he saw no release to be coming, despite the fact that Atlee promised to help him. And Aidan.

"Drink, Henry! Before you would be to tired from the morphine..."

Henry began to suck and finally Atlee lifted the bag over his head, so that the rest of the blood would run out completely.

Atlee sighed when Henry finished the bag.

"Okay, I´ll come back tomorrow...Now give yourself over to the medicine..." he stroked Henry´s temple and after a last look on him, left the cellar.

_Next evening_:

When Atlee entered the base floor he found not to be alone like before. There were two guardians at the door to the house. A fact that let Atlee grew suspicious. Inside he found a third guard at the door to the cellar. His hand drove into the pocket of his coat and shoved the box deeper into it.

Why so much custody for a single semi-dead, semi-comatose captive out in nowhere? Had Mother grown suspicious about what was going on here? He had been very careful and the small amounts of blood were by her personal order…

"He! What´s up?" Atlee tried to sound unconcerned, jovial. "Why so much of yours hanging around here? New game…? Gonna make up a football team and the punshing ball will be my captive? Be careful! Mother is still in use of him for_ her_ enjoyment!" He grinned but inside his immortal blood went down to freeze level. A whole friggin´ bunch of guards meant that something important was ahead.

"Mother is coming to look how things are going with him…" he nodded in the direction where Henry would be hanging from the ceiling. One captive was still dust, the other two were dead and in a state of progressive rotting. Just hanging there to tell Henry what he was waiting for…

"May I…" Atlee directed to the door and the guardian stepped aside to let him in.

When he entered the cellar, the stench had risen since last time due to the corpses in decay. He went to Henry and looked at him. Henry´s chin was sunken on his ruined chest, the tip of that hook covered in dried blood and when Atlee carefully felt for the wound area, fresh blood mixed with pus oozed out of the wound. Atlee hissed with despise and anger. That was looking worse than last time. His hand moved up to the throat and the temple, felt for the skin. Found it warm like in a fever.

"God! That sucks…" he cursed in a low voice. He breathed deep and lifted Henry´s head with one hand.

"Henry?...Henry! It´s me, Atlee! I got what you needed, my friend…", he whispered.

Eyelids opened to narrow slits over black pools, the pupils widened beyond normal. The gaze uncertain, wavering, glistening. Feverish. Atlee cursed under his breath. Henry was definitely on the edge and he didn´t suppose how long Aidan´s son would stand his field. He really looked ready…to die.

"Henry! Don´t leave me! For heaven´s sake and for Aidan! You must stay with us!" he urgently begged in the hope that the vampire would at least be able to understand a bit of what he was telling him.

Undecipherable groans came out between the lips, that were sore and split. Atlee bent nearer, listening.

"Sta…sta…ke…me!"

"No! No, Henry, you have to live for…" Atlee protested.

The hinges of the door creaked.

Atlee turned around and froze.

Mother entered the cellar with two of her personal security man.

Atlee bent down in a gesture of respect and stepped back a bit.

"Right! He has to live for what I´ll have at hands for him!" Her voice cold with contempt. She reached Henry and shouted at him; "Raise your head when a royal is talking to you, traitorous bastard!"

Henry tried to rise his head. It was heavy like a leaden globe. His neck muscles weak from the unbearable pain and his sheer exhaustion. He moaned and his lips trembled, his eyes falling shut again by drowsiness. Mother directed a guard to him, her voice demanding when she gave her order:

"Lift his face! I want to look into his eyes when I´m going to promise him his fate! I want to see the fear in his eyes!"

The man stepped to Henry, his hand grabbed for Henry´s chin and in a raw movement he shoved his head up and backwards so that Henry had to look right into Mother´s face, despite the fact that he was on the edge to unconsciousness. His lids slipped open with much effort and he breathed with a gasping.

"Wha..what…else…do you..want?" His voice raspy, hoarse and resigning. Mother in front of him…what else to wait for? Kill me and get it over with, like you killed Suren, he thought but was to weak for speaking. His chin seemed to break under the iron grip of the man and he choked. A coughing fit set his chest ablaze and he moaned unintended, tears dripping from his burning eyes. The guard looked back at Mother with contempt.

"Shall I kill him for you?" he asked. Ready to fulfill her orders. That vampire was an infamy for their whole kind. A traitor and coward. Mother should get ready with him so that she could go on without that heap of poop on her heels…

"That I´ll do for myself! Thank you!..." she turned to Henry; " And I ´ll take my time with you! And you would be going to beg that my daughter would have killed you when you came in crawling and begging to be accepted into the family again! And how did you honor her grace? By leading your damn sire into uprising and attempted regicide against _me_!"

She moved and slapped him into the face. The hit so strong his head flew back and he screamed when the hook seemed to tear him apart.

Atlee stood helpless nearby, with no chance to intervene, and saw new blood soak from the wound when the dangling body was swinging at the chain. He felt a dry knot rising in his throat and wished he could have stopped her, but Mother could kill him with one move of her hand. In helpless wrath he saw when she went on with her tormented victim.

Henry was barely conscious yet and Atlee heard his heart beating hard.

Mother stared at Henry, her face bare of any emotion, the less any mercy. Her face was stone, a mask of hatred. She moved forward until she stood directly in front of Henry, her hand cupped his chin, her sharp nails digging into the skin like claws.

Henry moaned with pain, unable to hide it any longer, and felt her cool breath in his face when his head was lifted enough that she could stare into his tearing eyes.

"Don´t spill your tears too soon, Henry Durham! For that when I´m going to tear limb from limb from you, you will have opportunity enough to cry and scream. Beg for my mercy, beg for the stake that won´t ever to come. Because I´m determined to let you suffer for what you´ve done. I despise you and I´ll enjoy your death step by step…"

Henry choked up a clot of saliva and with last strength he spit it in her direction. It missed her face by accident and dripped down on her cleavage. The guard sped to her side and his hand rose to slap him hard into the bloody face, but she caught his hand mid-air.

"You ever dare! He is mine!" she spat at him and the man backed.

"I´ll be back in two weeks, my friend and then I´ll start with your right arm! Every time I´ll come back you´ll be gonna lose one limb. As a once medic you know very well how many parts a body contents that can be separated from each other! It´ll take a very long time!"

Henry kept back a groan.

"See you later! Two weeks!"

She laughed out devilish, turned around on her heels and followed by her security, she left the room with no further word. The door fell shut behind her.

When the room was empty but of Henry and Atlee, the Dutch put his hands on Henry´s hips, looked into his face.

"Now Thank God we know how much time is left for to get you both out and away from here!"

He grabbed for the small box in the pocket of his coat, filled a syringe with the solution and his hand rose to Henry´s shoulder- throat bow. His finger felt for the clavicular vein and he inserted the needle into the wire like vein, pressed down the poppet and shot him the whole dose in once.

Henry moaned deeply, his eyes wide in shock and desperation.

"It´ll be better soon. For a while at least…" Atlee stroked Henry´s temple to soothe him until the morphine would do.

A while.

A time of two weeks. Get him out of here or he will die a terrible death, Atlee thought.

Before Henry´s eyes fell shut under the comfort of the analgetic, he whispered two words.

"Sta…ke. Me!"

Atlee turned around to hide his face that was torn in pain. His fist dug into the wooden pillar near by and the dry wood crackled and dust and splinters rose in a thin cloud when he moved around to leave the cellar.

Outside the guardian shot him a look but Atlee was out of the building with so much as an urgent feeling to kill Mother…

Atlee finally stopped along the narrow road, in some distance to the house. He took his breath, not aware it had sped up. Not by need but out of excitement. He tried to calm himself down a bit, to reign in the turmoil of feelings that flooded his mind. This willing-to-help Josh had to be brought out of hospital within the deadline, otherwise both vampires would be lost! Under no circumstances he would be able to get them out only by himself.

One week later Josh woke with a start when a cool hand carefully touched his shoulder. With a trembling in his whole body Josh opened his eyes, only to find a very concerned Atlee at his bedside.

"Man! Don´t do that ever again! You nearly gave me a heart attack! I´m human! None of your guys, the less an Amish!", Josh cursed and slowly his heart beat reduced to a slightly normal level when he breathed more deep.

"Sorry, but you were asleep..."

"Couldn´t you wait until I woke by myself? You guys don´t burn up in daylight like good old Count Dracula or his bunch of bats. You could wait until morning..."

"Normally you would be right, but.." Atlee began.

"Normally! Normally...what does that be? Normally! Since this damn thing had bitten me, nothing was normal anymore! You can´t even imagine what it means to turn every friggin´ Full Moon!" Josh now was in a mood to complain. He was angry, excited and felt betrayed by destination.

"You´re not the only one who was turned!", Atlee tried to bring him down a bit. He needed this human/werewolf.

"Yes! But you don´t break every friggin´ Full Moon your bones to change into that...that thing." Pause. "Wolf!" ,he corrected himself. Josh didn´t want to play into the Dutch´s hands now.

"That´s sad...", Atlee mumbled.

No! It´s _shit_!", Josh growled and stared angrily at the Dutch. What did the vampire want now? Again.

"We...you...I...have a deadline, Josh! Mother came in and she will come back over the next week. There´s only one week left until, like she promised would start to kill Aidan´s son limb by limb!"

"Limb by limb. You...you´re gonna mean that literally, don´t you?" Josh didn´t trust his ears.

"No! I´m totally serious about it! She has set up a death sentence for Henry! She´s going to...to amputate limb by limb. Gonna let him die slowly. If we don´t get him out of there within the next week, he´ll die! And after him your...friend Aidan. .." He closed his eyes and finally looked at Josh.

"And what do you think how in heaven or hell we´ll get there, wherever _there_ is! I´m...", Josh padded on his left thigh; "Nailed to that bed. Nurse Ms. Eyes-overall has threatened me with Karate Black Belt when I won´t stay where I belong to, she meant. And friggin´ belong-to meant her ward and this room!", Josh waved with an arm, indicating the whole room. Atlee looked at him with some disbelief.

"What has a nurse to do with your time staying in here?", his brows knitted when he fixed Josh.

"Right. The decision is by the doctor. But in difference to you I´m not able to spellbound anyone...Just make them doing what I want or to become invisible despite the fact I´m not Dark Face..."

"Who´s Dark Face. A...another vampire?" Atlee asked. He wasn´t in movies, especially not vampire movies...

"No vampire. Dark Face was a man who came in contact with a corrosive liquid so he lost his face and was furthermore hiding behind a mask of liquid tissue...Genetic technologies. Other than simple artificial insemination of cows...", Josh grinned.

"I never artificially inseminated a cow!"

"For sure not! The time you had been still mortal...they made new cows by letting a cow being jumped by a bull! Josh clenched his fist and moved it back and forth horizontally very fast. A grin split his face when he looked at Atlee the same time. Inside he waited for him to flush. "You guys never jump a woman? He! What Aidan told me you aren´t in bagged food! The old way always. Gonna make the Pennsylvanian Count Dracula, don´t you?"

"I hadn´t to do anything with the Halloway overkill Bishop once referred to...", Atlee protested.

"Right! Otherwise he would have killed you right away. This Bishop didn´t like it when rules were broken while he was the leader of your bunch."

"I...I have..."Atlee stammered.

"Uh hu. Are you getting enough hay for your donkey? Getting the _fang bangers_ in the hotel? Telling you guys having Mr. Happy going all night long, hm?" Josh smirked.

"My feeding habits aren´t up for discussion!" Atlee´s face was of a threatening calmness. "We don´t have time to waste!", he warned him.

"Sorry, sorry!" Josh sighed and threw his hands up in a gesture of resignation. His voice became earnest. "So how do you expect me to drop out of hospital? By throwing the gurney out of the window?" Josh spat at him a bit angrily. He bit his lower lip.

"You´re working in this hospital! We are gonna need blood...Aidan and Henry will have to feed. They are out of food since the time they were caught...", Atlee declared.

"I thought you´re feeding Henry at least once in a while."

"I do...but that´s way too less. I can´t give him more than one or two additional bags a week beside the amount Mother allows to keep him alive for her purposes. There are guards... And I´m running out of the MST soon..."

"Gee, that´s bad. I don´t have access to that stuff! I´m no doctor and one needs a special prescription! That´s by law! I can´t and I won´t risk my job for it! Don´t ever think of that!"

"So you need a doctor for it", Atlee stated calmly. Behind the mask of his face he saw it working.

"Looks like!", Josh´s voice and tone were cold. "I´m not in a condition worse enough to give the patient in urgent need for MST!"

"So we have to convince a doctor that you are!" Atlee concluded.

"Don´t dare to...", Josh began but Atlee was out of the room before Josh could stop him or do anything else to hold him back.

Outside the room, in the hall that was empty at this time, Atlee walked along the line of rooms until he reached the room with the glass front, where doctors and nurses kept the medical files. He looked through the window and saw a young doctor standing at the files container. He knocked at the glass and the man´s head turned around to him. He smiled at him and came out of the room.

"What can I do for you?", the doctor asked. Atlee read the badge on the left side of the doctor´s chest.

"Doctor Smith...My friend, who dies from cancer, needs a new box of morphine! You did a prescription for him before!" His voice a hint deeper than before, his eyes bled black. He fixed the eyes of the young doctor, whose view became strangely absent. Atlee smiled when he knew the man to be under his control. His voice intensive, compelling. The human would do what he wanted him to do.

"So be so kind and write out the prescription!", Atlee commanded. His voice friendly but insisting.

The doctor looked into the vampire eyes and nodded. He went inside the room again and Atlee followed him, bent over the table where the doctor was writing out the order.

"What is his name?", the doctor asked, his voice fading away. Atlee gave him a hastily composed name out of mind and the man finished the prescription, handed it over to him.

"Thank you Doctor Smith! You´re very kind and there wouldn´t be any problems for you. You did well for a poor suffering patient." Atlee smiled and gave the doctor free from his control. He left the doctor´s room and returned to Josh.

"What did you do, he?", Josh grunted when the Dutch returned to him with an expression of satisfaction in his face.

"Nothing bad. I convinced a Dr. Smith to write out a prescription..." Atlee explained and added, when he saw Josh´s suspicious view; "I didn´t harm him. Only convinced him! He´s still well, nothing to worry about, Josh..."

"You´re playing that thing very well due to your vampire skills.", Josh agreed with him a hint of cynicism.

"I´ll come at friday night. Until then you have to get the blood we´ll need. You´re the nurse, Josh! You´ll manage it. Think of Aidan!" Atlee sounded determined. "Please!", he added; "You´re the only one Aidan and I can count on. And we´re going to need a car!"

"Okay. I´ll try it. For Aidan!", Josh sounded not very convinced but the thought of an Aidan dying slowly and rotting was worse. Not to speak of Henry, his son, who would die too. They couldn´t abandon them to their fate, he thought.

"There will be no trying, Josh. See you Friday at 5 p.m." Atlee smiled and waved him a good-bye. Then he left the room.

Josh moaned.

These vampires are driving me mad slowly but definitely...

_Friday evening_

Josh opened the doors of his car and Atlee took his seat beside the driver´s position in the front. His face was stern and he breathed with release when Josh started the engine and drove into the late afternoon traffic of Boston. For a while he didn´t speak and simply looked out of the window. Josh got him in a closer watch. The Dutch looked concentrated and he could read an expression of sorrow in his seemingly young face. The late afternoon sun put a golden luster on his reddish blond hair and his pale blue eyes looked in this moment like a blue sky.

"How long will we need…?" he asked in a low voice. Trying to hide his nervousness.

"Uhm, looks stuffed…that afternoon traffic is a mess of a time…Normally I´m not involved in the regular chaos ´cause I change shift at other hours…I forgot how I hate it… Think, you live a lot more relaxed in Dutch County…", he growled nervously.

"Maybe…as long as you don't drive into the small towns. Lancaster is a hell of traffic…sorry for the expression but those tourists…not used to slowly horse-drawn buggies…They drive like city slickers… Got a lot of possibly-accidents when the horses get a shock from honking… They´re sometimes totally ignorant but wanna do like haughtily Glotzkopp…" he grinned.

"…´Kay…?!

Josh steered the car through the traffic, his eyes fixed on the road.

His mind went round with how they should act when they reached the hidden lair where Mother slept for usual.

Two targets were to be fulfilled:

First to save that Aidan´s son Henry and then to dig up Aidan.

They would need any single hand to get him out of his gruesome prison. Josh didn´t want to think about in which shape Aidan would be after two weeks of imprisonment. They needed Henry to help them and Atlee had told him how worse his condition was.

Hanging from the ceiling , like a piece of meat in a slaughterhouse…nearly bled out only kept alive by small amounts of blood, fed to him by Atlee who had the last days provided him with the remaining morphine to disburden him from his torture a bit at least…

Both would be hungry beyond imagination…

Josh hoped that the bags of blood would be enough for both to strengthen them and more important: to satisfy them so far, they won´t go straight for their necks…

A wounded and nearly bled out set free vampire was a fierce opponent, call him monster…

Two were an incalculable risk so far

As long as it didn´t come to Aidan.

Who he once tried to let feed from him, but werewolves were incompatible to vampires…

What luck.

But that didn´t close in other vampires.

They left town finally and the traffic became less intensive. Josh breathed with release. The sun was sinking beyond the horizon fast and a dark blue crept in view. Josh felt somewhat strange. It wasn´t Full Moon for good luck. Normally he drove off into the woods only for the turning to be lonely when his wild side was breaking free from all restraints. And Josh doubted that he would be of much help when he would be turned wolf. He would be able to hunt down their opponents but he had no control so he possibly would endanger Aidan, Atlee and Henry as well…

Josh tried to drive back the thoughts and now that they were out of Boston he needed the Dutch to lead them the way to the hidden place.

"Where now?", Josh asked and directed to the cross-way ahead.

Atlee bent forward and looked through the windshield. It was nearly dark now. Then he directed to the right.

"There…down right. Be careful, that way is merely a feldwesch…narrow and raw ground. For heaven´s sake it doesn´t rain…"

"A what?", Josh asked. He wasn´t used to Dutch German with heavy dialect.

"A farm track…", Atlee explained calmly.

"Oh! That. Okay. Let´s go…" Ready for the worst he turned right and drove into a way that was dark and lined by primitive wire fences. By perspective in the dark and lit by the front lights of his car it looked as if the way became more and more narrow with each meter they drove.

The car buckled over stones and through holes and after a while Josh was quite certain where his spine was.

"Are you sure we´ll make it to the house before we crash into a fence or any unfriendly natural appearance of the fifth kind?", he commented the condition of the road. Suddenly a terrifying idea of finding himself face to face with a panic striken Longhorn bull right in the way fixed in his mind. What if there were cattle in the dark fields and a fence was out of order?

As a werewolf he feared nothing like that but he was human shape now… And an enraged adult bull was a ton of muscles ready to defend his cows and calves if he defined nightly cars as enemies.

"You bring in your Queen by horse-drawn buggy, didn´t you?" Josh pressed through clenched teeth, concentrating on that road to hell.

"My _Queen_?" Atlee shot him an astonished side view.

"Your leader. Your Queen of the Damned…", Josh answered and steered the car slowly through a deep mold, large enough to be a footprint of a Jurassic Park T-Rex or a Baby Godzilla.

"We call her Mother…", Atlee explained.

"So you descend all from her like those vampires in the Rice books in which every vampire on earth´ surface descends from the oldest vampiress, an Egyptian ex-Pharaoh…", Josh mumbled while he managed the crater sized road problem.

With sensitiveness and luck they reached the other edge of the hole without tearing off his oil pan or his exhaust.

"We don´t descend from her like being bred…she´s the oldest vampire around and simply our leader now… Usually she doesn´t turn humans into vampires. That´s she herself finds it infra dig…"

"Uh huh! A real Queen. Let the nether jobs to the plebs…", Josh commented. "Maybe she thinks that a direct descendant from her own blood would be too equal to her?"

"Weiss nich*…" Atlee shrugged his shoulders. (* Don´t know.)

"Would you be so kind…"Josh waved his hand in a gesture; "…and stop talking to me in the Dutch dialect. Especially in moments where I´ll have to understand you within parts of a second… I´m sorry, but I´m not used to your language… I´m from Ithaca, New York, not from Pennsylvania…"

"Sorry. Old habits…", he made an excuse to Josh.

"Yeah. For sure you have _real_ old habits, Atlee, corresponding to your span of existence…"

"Yeap! And I´m rarely out of Pennsylvania Dutch County…"

"How old are you really, Buddy?"

"Some two hundred forty years. Sometimes I lost count…", Atlee smiled and suddenly he directed to the left.

"Over there! Turn left!", he said.

Josh narrowed his eyes. The road turn looked more narrow than the path they were driving yet.

"Do you, by all respect, have any clue how in the world we we´ll manage it to drive back these ways in pure darkness when we´ll be in a hurry while being hunted by a pack of enraged vampires we try to run from?", Josh shouted as he tore the car in a sharp left turn, merely missing the first fence post.

"There will be some guards and maybe we´ll have to fight our way back…", Atlee answered in a calm tone.

"Yeah! Really! Good idea! You´re immortal as long as no one stakes you in the heart! But I´m mortal! Even as a werewolf which I´m not turned to now! I can…fuckin´ freekin´ die if you forgot!" he shouted back while they rumbled over the farm track. "Did you ever in your long life think for another plan or option _before_ you start?"

"Mostly my life is a calm one…", Atlee whispered, full aware that this was the answer Josh was really waiting for now.

"Okay! Okay. I hope only Aidan or Henry have better ideas! I should have searched for a Colonel to develop a war strategy instead following the knitted scarf plan of a two hundred fifty year old Bible Christ!" Josh was angry now. The driving was unnerving and the plan looked like that of a child.

"You know what we call this…?", his head bent back, directing to the cooling unit with the blood bags; "Shake before use. After shaking not usable anymore! Aidan and Henry would be very excited by frothed up blood cocktails!" His voice dripped with cynicism.

Instead Atlee directed to the front where a dark building with a base floor and an upper floor integrated into the roof appeared. The pathway opened to a large area that was roughly flattened into a simple parking lot. In a nearby barn stood a car. The area wasn´t lit and Josh stopped abruptly, pushed in the reverse gear, turned around and drove back into the way they came off.

"I hope so nobody had seen this!", he growled. "Couldn´t you tell me earlier? I think you know the area!"

"Yes, but there´s no one in the base floor. Not at this time! Henry is in the cellar room and there are only two guards who exchange. This house is so abandoned that no one is searching for… Why should he? An left over former burial service. Left since more than ninety years… Mother won´t search her lair amidst the public. This area is safe and lost!"

Josh stopped the car, turned his head, his arm on the seat back. He looked over to the darkened place. His voice low and stern.

"And where is that grave you talked about? Where is Aidan?"

"In the forest beyond the building…there is a large clearing with an angel shaped gravestone. No name is engraved…It looks like an empty grave, ready to wait for an upcoming burial…"

"How fitting!" Josh growled. "How can we get there? We will need time to dig Aidan up! Who will guard the place while we´re digging?"

"We get Henry out and I´ll shut off the guardians. They are human and way too slowly for being a real opponent!" Atlee said with determination. He slipped out of the car with the grace of a predator and opened the back seat door, grabbed for the cooling unit. Without a sound he closed the door and placed the box on the ground. Josh left the car and watched over to the house.

"Shall we go together or do you…?", he asked.

"I´ll go first, Josh! Wait here for me! I´ll handle the guards, give you a signal and then we´ll go into the cellar! I need you to get Henry off that hook! You…you´re a nurse. Josh, right?", Atlee began carefully.

Josh nodded; "What for?"

"Have you ever…seen a…hooked up man?"

"I´ve seen accidents, worse than that in the ER! I won´t chuck up the damn breakfast! When he´s still alive then we´ll get him out of there!", Josh sounded determined by despair. With grim determination he grabbed the box and bowed behind the car, his eyes following the Dutch who went over the wast parking lot and entered the house.

Atlee stepped down the stairs to the cellar until he met the guard in front of the door.

"Uh, Atlee! See you! Feeding hour?", the guard directed with a nasty grin into the cellar room from where a stench of decay and blood emerged. Strong enough to speed up Atlee´s heartbeats. He lifted the blood bag in his hand and grinned.

"Snack time!"

The guard smiled and for a mere second was distracted by the movement.

Time enough for Atlee to grab the man and snap his neck.

The man fell to the ground like a puppet with cut wires, his eyes widened in astonishment when Atlee simply let him drop.

He pulled him up into the seat, his back resting against the seat back, his head resting against the wall above. From afar he looked unsuspicious. Atlee turned around with nostrils wide and eyes bled black, his fangs fell and he growled lowly.

He caught the scent that came from Henry, listened for a breath, a heartbeat.

After a few long seconds he heard his heart beating with effort. Slowly and weak. Sign of the immense blood loss.

When Atlee heard no one else in short distance, he walked nearer to Henry, his hand cupped his chin and the other one felt for the forehead.

Henry let out a row of deep and agonizing groans, his lids snapped open and he hissed through clenched fangs.

"Easy…easy, Henry…ssshhh…it´s all okay…all okay. I´m here to get you out of here! I came with a friend…you know him! Don´t be afraid and be quiet! Please, Henry! Ssshhh…" He cupped with the palm of his right hand his mouth, the other one stroked his forehead.

It was unnaturally warm.

For a vampire´s condition.

Quite clear Henry was highly feverish…

Shit! Atlee thought. That would complicate the whole thing. Henry was…so grazy it seemed …seriously ill. The lack of blood and the inability to heal his body under these circumstances had risen a kind of inflammation in the wounded chest. Henry coughed and the coughing fit went over into agonizing groans when the pain nearly knocked him unconscious.

"Gi…gim´me…morphine…!", he stammered weakly and with a pause after each single word. His fingers trembled helpless, dangling at his sides. Atlee closed his arms around the shivering, shaking figure, his face near under the pierced chest so the smell of the dried blood was nearly overwhelming.

"Ssshhh, hold still Henry! I can´t narcotize you this time! We´ll have to get you free and you will have to help us to dig Aidan up!"

"Ca…can´t!...Can´t! I…die!" Tears shot from Henry´s eyes, bloody drops that streamed down his cheeks."Please…please…stake me!"

"I won´t let you die, Henry!"

He looked so miserable it nearly drove a stone into Atlee´s heart.

His hands cupped Henry´s cheeks, his thumbs becoming red with the bloody droplets.

"Don´t cry, Henry! I´ll get you out of here…"

"Yo…you promi…sed. Every…night. Don´t fake me!", he pressed out merely audible. "Can´t an…more!"

"Tonight! I´m back in a few moments! Be silent, Henry!" Atlee looked into the ruined face with the feverish black eyes, felt a last time for the way too hot forehead and turned around hastily. He sped up the stairs where he knew the other guardian to wait for his shift, broke the door and before the man could let out a scream he grabbed him and snapped his neck. Then he growled, bent down and bit deep into the neck, breaking through skin and muscles, tearing the jugular vein open and began to drink.

He drank his fill, then turned around and ran down the stairs, checked the house for further men or vampires. When he found it empty, he left and waved over to Josh, indicating him to be quiet.

Josh saw him standing under the roof, waving him and he grabbed the box, crossed the dark place and came up to Atlee.

"You…handled them?"

"Yeah! They are dead. Both." He answered stern. Without any emotion.

"I mean…you…you killed them?", Josh sounded a bit uncertain.

"Yes. Otherwise they would have made alert and killed us!" Atlee finished the discussion. "Come on!" He shoved Josh into the house and down the stairs.

In front of the door to the cellar Josh stopped dead in his tracks, watched over the guardian in his seat. He felt for his pulse.

The man was stone dead.

As a human Josh felt uncomfortable with the kills but his mind told him it had been necessary to make it safe. Atlee was right. An alive guard would have called for the other vampires and they would never ever had the chance to free Henry and Aidan.

When he entered the cellar room beside the Dutch the stench was nearly overwhelming. Four bodies were hanging under the ceiling. The first two in a state of decay that wasn´t to be mistaken. A third one was reduced to a heap of dust under a now empty hook.

"Oh my God!" Josh pressed a hand over his mouth until he adapted a bit to the smell of death.

"Hurry! Come over!", Atlee urged him and Josh followed him to the dangling Henry.

Josh looked upwards.

What he saw was gruesome.

A steel hook tip protruded from the chest, covered in blood and the body of the vampire hung like a nearly dead thing from it.

"And…he´s…still alive?" Josh´s voice trembled. He tended not to believe his very eyes. What he saw was medieval torture! Not simply punishment. How could Henry be still alive? Dear God in heaven!

The groans that came from the body verified his worst imaginations.

Josh put the box to the ground, his hands laid onto the arm and under the shoulder of Henry.

Black eyes shot open and the vampire growled like an animal, fangs extended…

Josh shrunk back hastily. While he tried to flee a hand grabbed for his wrist with the force of a steel ring and the sounds that came out of Henry´s throat were more than terrifying.

Blood!

Human!

Warm, alive.

The hunger was rising within him with animalistic force. His body cringed for blood, bled out as it was since Atlee tried to provide him with more blood than allowed. But this had been a trial far from being enough to really being helpful.

The less to heal him!

Now his body longed for his chance!

Henry growled, his feverish eyes fixed onto the body so nearby. His arms rose automatically with fingers grabbing like claws.

"Stop! STOP!" Josh shouted. His voice full of panic. This wasn´t Aidan! Aidan, his friend he would trust with his life to. "LET ME GO!"

This was Henry, son of Aidan and now a vampire near to death. When he was brought in skinned he hadn´t suffered for such a long time like now when he was hanging here now since more than two weeks.

The two weeks Josh had spent in the hospital. The only one who could be trusted to and could help to free both. Josh felt the discrepancy of knowledge that Henry was out of control now by circumstances he wasn´t responsible for and for that Josh felt pity out of professional experience as a nurse, but on the other hand he felt pure fear now that fingers closed like claws around his wrists, trying to pull him into a deadly hug.

"You CAN´T drink from me! I´m WEREWOLF!", he screamed with panic his last chance for freedom.

Henry ever had been somewhat incalculable. He had been more than reluctant with Aidan bringing Henry into his house. Any other vampire additionally minimized the safety and integrity of his home. His personal refuge.

Josh´s heart raced with fear, seconds seemed to stretch into a hell of eternity before he felt a second set of hands closing around his arms…

God! He was going to die!

Now!

Two vampires fought with each other for the only one who was human.

Fought like hungry predators for his blood.

He felt cool hectic breath in his neck, damn near his jugular vein where his life force was racing now with the speed of his racing heart, pumped through his system like wild water.

"LET. HIM. GO!", Atlee demanded, his voice all forceful. Manipulative.

Henry groaned and growled.

"You´ll DIE if you drink from him!" Atlee shouted at Henry.

The vampire screamed with pain and disappointment, but his fingers released Josh´s wrists and his hands went limb. Tears dripped from Henry´s eyes and he stared at Josh with despair. So desperate Josh felt a knot in his throat rising. He had seen Henry at his worst before and now he felt mercy for him.

No one deserved such a punishment.

That was gruesome. Primitive. Medieval brutality.

Josh stumbled back a few steps without losing contact with Henry´s dark and tearing eyes. He fought for his breath, his wrists seemed to burn hot and red from the desperate clasp.

When he felt himself under control again and ready to go on newly, he looked into Henry´s face more firmly.

"Listen! Listen to me, Henry! I want…we want to help you! Do you understand…?"

He waited for Henry to answer. Giving him time that the words would find their way into his hunger and pain fogged brain.

Eyelids closed once. Was this to be taken as a yes?

Josh sighed, felt a bit more safe with Atlee in his back.

It seemed like Henry became more calm now, coming down from his desperate need to a state one could talk to him more rationally.

Josh dared a step forward.

"Henry, we´re going to help you now! Please, stay calm! No one wants to hurt you! Get it?... I have blood for you which you can drink…!" Pause. Lips moved.

"What? Again please…"

"I…I´m…sor…ry…", Henry whispered. "Sorry…" His weak voice fading away.

Josh nodded.

"It´s all okay Henry! All okay. But you gave me a shock, really!...Okay, let´s go on…" Josh bent to the ground, opened the lid of the cooling unit and grabbed a bag of blood, lifting it in front of Henry so he could see it.

A growl, low, formed in his throat when his body reacted to the sight and slight scent of the blood in front of him. Basic instincts. Survival instincts. Hard to fight to keep control he normally clung so dear to.

Dear God. He was hungry…so hungry!

But the man in front of him would demand control! Otherwise he won´t get a single drop, Henry thought.

When Josh saw that Henry seemed to keep himself under control he came nearer to him. He opened the small tube and reached upward to Henry´s face. His left hand carefully cupped his chin, lifted the face a bit and with the other hand he shoved the open end of the tube between Henry´s sore lips.

A strange way to provide somebody with blood but he doubted that Henry would have the strength to take hold of the bag himself.

"I know it´s cold but…", Josh excused.

Lips formed words that obviously meant it doesn´t matter. That was reasonable.

Henry began to suck weakly, the tube making noises like he was sucking on a straw. Josh felt the bag go inwards under the urgent gulps and he asked himself how fast Henry would empty it.

They had provided a seriously hurt Aidan with transfusions in the cellar of the hospital. Lying on a makeshift emergency bed.

But Henry was hanging and he needed blood to get him into a condition they would at least be able to free him without causing more damage.

It would be painful.

But they needed him and so he would be of no use when he was unconscious from narcotics. Josh´s caring mind cringed with the thought when they were going to pull him off the hook.

"Okay. Drink, Henry…it´s okay…you will get any better. At least a bit…"

When Henry sucked more calmly now, his head stabilized by a human hand, Josh concentrated onto his fingers. Onto what he felt.

"Shouldn´t his…skin temperature be low? Aidan feels way cooler… It seems to me he is kind of…unnaturally or abnormally…warm. Whatever you call this…", Josh mumbled, his face turned a bit to Atlee. The question stood written right into his face.

"Yeah. I got that too. Don´t know what to call this… Feels like…fever!", Atlee suspected and shook his head.

"Maybe he´s in a fever. This terrible wound! His condition…Won´t wonder if. Eventually he´s kind of alive organism with flesh and blood and if Aidan is right with his opinion that diseases are ward off more effectively as in humans, then it doesn´t wonder me if he is suffering from any kind of high risen fever…", Josh explained.

Josh thought about the chances a weakened, barely healing and feverish Henry could be of any help. He would need help for himself instead.

Hands clung into Josh´s shoulders, trembling, uncertain, desperately.

Not aggressive only searching for support. A foot tip hit his shinbone and legs tried to wrinkle around his legs in the desperate attempt to find any hold.

Henry groaned when his movements caused new pain in his chest instead of giving him support.

"STOP! Stop! Don´t do that, Henry! Stop!", Josh gasped.

Henry´s head fell back and he groaned deep in the throat, his eyes filled with tears when the wound in his chest went on fire with excruciating pain. His eyes fell shut and he lost consciousness for a moment.

Atlee tried to help Josh with Henry.

"That´s what I was afraid of! He won´t be any help for us! No chance to get him walking out of here on his own legs! He´s a sick person! No more! We´ll have to put him in my car and adesso basta! There he can recover. Together with Aidan! Should have stolen the damn Rescue Van! Instead of using my own buggy!", Josh grumbled.

"Looks like he´s unconscious…", Atlee answered after a firm look into Henry´s face that was sunken on his chest now when Josh had grabbed into his neck.

"Then we should make use of the option! Get him down fast. I don´t wanna have him screaming whole urban Boston together…!", Josh urged.

Determined to took the leading position now.

Atlee was of good will but he lacked of practical experience with injured people. The plan of the Dutch had worked so far as it came to shut off the guards, but now it was Josh´s term to finish this. After that they would search the grave to dig out Aidan.

A very hungry and not less dangerous Aidan!

Josh looked around and studied the construction. Anywhere above had to be the other end of the chain that ended into that terrible hook that protruded from Henry´s chest.

Ah! He was right! There was a chain and its end was fixed near ground to another hook that kept it straight and tight.

Henry´s feet were dangling some thirty centimeters above the ground. He wasn´t the tallest among those vampires. Josh thought for a moment how to do best. Than he decided:

"You grab him around the hips and I will loosen the chain from the ground hook. Then you catch him as much as possible and we´ll lower his body to the ground in a sitting position…Ugh…that´s becoming worse than imagined. For God´s sake he´s unconscious! Don´t want to knock him out by beating him on the skull…"

Josh was anxious.

To care for an injured victim of an accident or an assault was harmless in relation to that!

"Okay! And then you´ll pull out the hook…"Atlee nodded.

"Me? Are you mad? How do? That thing goes in a curve from his spine to his chest bone, through his whole chest! It´s CURVED! No damn lineal blade of a sword! When I pull it out he´ll start to bleed like hell!"

Atlee nodded sorrowful.

"That´s right, but we have no other chance, unless you know a surgeon who does surgery on vampires! He´ll heal. We have blood and when he can´t help us you can shot him with morphine up to the cortex. We have to do it, Josh! And we have to do it fast! Otherwise…"

A moan pulled them out of their discussion.

"That´s what I meant when I said FAST!", Atlee finished.

Josh whirled around, his eyes wide with a hint of panic.

Out of a reflex he jumped to Henry´s side and before the vampire had a chance to understand, Josh knocked him off by a left handed hook with all his strength. He had no clue how hard he had to beat to knock a vampire out.

For sure now less strength was necessary than usually.

Henry had been barely coming out of his unconsciousness when he was sent back by a mortal fist.

"Sorry, Buddy! But that was a case of Emergency! No bad will!" Josh mumbled and his fingers massaged his fist. Vampires tended to have damn hard and strong chin bones.

Henry´s body went limb again and Josh loosened the chain. The metal rumbled through the ring under the ceiling and Atlee caught Henry around the hips, fixed him until the chain was running free enough to sit the vampire onto the ground. Atlee kneeled in front of Henry whose head was sunken on his chest.

He was unconscious.

"Okay! You´re the doctor in charge here, Josh! Pull it out!"

He saw Josh´s reluctance and they were going to run out of time soon…

"Uhm…I…I don´t know…" Josh answered. His voice full of fear. Barely hidden. Not to the vampire who could scent it like open blood.

"Okay! Get hold of him, Josh! I´ll do it!", Atlee commanded.

Josh changed position with him, his hands fixing Henry´s skull on top and under the chin. His knees pressed against the lower abdomen in the hope to fix the body so far that Atlee would manage a curved movement to get that hook out.

"You have to move it upwards in a curve! Don´t forget it! Otherwise we would shredder his whole chest into pieces. What would be of no use and would spare us the whole action finally!", Josh tried to develop a strategy with fatal realism.

He fixed himself for the moment, breathed deeply and nodded.

Atlee grabbed the hook with both hands. He also breathed deep and firm and pressed his foot against Henry´s butt.

A second. Two.

He tried to imagine the curved line and to adapt his movement to the form.

Then he pulled with full force and a concentration like never before.

Josh couldn´t see the steel moving but in the silence of the nightly room he heard a wet and tearing noise.

He shuddered.

The body under his hands moved backwards and he grabbed tighter. His eyes were fixed onto the tip of the hook that disappeared into the gaping hole in Henry´s chest and Josh grabbed with one hand into his neck to pull opposite.

All that went on so fast.

Atlee seemed to be determined to finish as fast as possible.

With a last loud and nausea rising sound the hook slit out of Henry´s back and Atlee breathed out with release.

"Got it!" he declared and threw the hook aside in a wide bow. Blood sparkled in the air before it crashed into a heap of straw in the corner.

A gush of blood was leaking from Henry´s chest and back and Josh pressed his hand on the wound.

"Damn, he´ll bleed us to death!" Josh shouted.

His finger went wet and slippery with thick red liquid and he shouted at Atlee;

"Get me something to cover the wound! Hurry!"

Hastily he slipped out of his hoody sweater and folded it to a makeshift pressure bandage, pressed it onto Henry´s chest. Atlee pressed from the other side.

"That bleeding will stop soon…" Atlee tried to calm down a more than uncertain Josh.

Josh lifted his head and looked into his face, his lower lip trembling.

This was Aidan´s beloved son!

Under the circumstances now he saw Henry as a seriously injured being which needed help and all his usual calmness in handling patients was necessary now.

Don´t think about what he is! Josh tried to concentrate on the basic needs and his hands worked automatically.

With one hand he felt for the pulse at the throat.

Found him weak and fast. The skin way too warm.

Damn.

Like predicted the bleeding subsided a bit. If out of vampire reasons or by a rising lack of blood he couldn´t tell.

Carefully he lifted the blood soaked sweater a bit, looked for the wound. The edges of the wound were torn and uneven when the hook had been pushed through with brutal force. Looked nausea rising to inexperienced helpers who weren´t used to the sight of heavy injuries.

"Henry?...Henry!", Josh called him. He looked into the face, with one finger lifting the upper eyelid. The pupil was black and wide open, so he couldn´t use the normal light reaction test.

"Henry! Can you hear me…? God, I hit you really hard but not that hard like that damn steel…" he mumbled.

After a while that seemed to stretch into an eternity the lids fluttered and with a painful moan Henry fought his way back into the night.

His chest was on fire and he felt so weak like nearly drained to death.

_He knew the feeling._

_Aidan was kneeling in front of him, his hands closed to an abstract cup, catching the blood that spilled from his belly where the stake had been driven in. Aidan bent his head to his hands and he began to…._

_Oh God!_

_…__began to drink!_

_He screamed and heard a voice._

_I won´t let you die, Henry…_

Don´t let me die!

"Do…don´t…let." Pause. "Me. Die!" Henry choked, his voice a stranger in his own ears. Hoarse, weak and gasping.

He buckled.

And screamed.

Hands fought him down and his head fell into what felt like a lap.

He gasped, exhausted, on the edge to unconsciousness.

"Atlee! Bring me the morphine! In my car! Front right in the glove compartment!", Josh ordered and Atlee sped out of the cellar. He was back so fast Josh still wondered. But he was used to vampire skills.

With trembling fingers he filled a syringe with the colorless solution.

Henry moaned.

"Easy, Henry…stay calm. I´ll shoot you morphine against the pain…You should fall asleep from it and we´ll put you into my car where you can sleep while healing. You got it…,hm?"

Josh plunged the needle into the vein that stood out like a wire. Shot the whole solution in one push into his system.

He was vampire. He won´t die from it, he calmed himself for his courage born by despair.

He threw the needle aside and his hands stroked the hot face. Henry stared into his eyes, the face of the man was swimming over him like a pale oval. His view became foggy and he moaned softly…

"Okay, sleep. Sleep Henry and when you wake up you´ll be better…"Josh tried to calm him so far he would relax. The morphine would do and after a few minutes Henry´s was fallen asleep.

"Okay, help me with him. He´s totally stoned no matter how hard he tries…Get him into the car and then we gonna go for Aidan! I want to get out of here as fast as possible… Aidan can care for him when we´re at home…"

Atlee helped him to carry the unconscious vampire into the car where they placed him in a human shaped heap on the backseat.

"So far for your plan of helping him us…I still suggested something like that when you told me they used him as a living smoked meat!"

"I´m sorry, Josh. I didn´t know _how_ worse he is… I had hoped the blood would help but it looks like he is in a far much worse condition than expected by me. I´m Dutch. No nurse or doctor…" Atlee tried to excuse the situation and his lacking knowledge.

"Forget it! I´m wondering what is expecting us with Aidan! After two weeks without feeding and in a cold grave…" Josh felt a creeping shudder rising up his spine that rose his hair up.

"Could look somewhat…dried out. No food turns us into grayish mummy like things if this goes on for a long period…", Atlee warned him.

"And…" Josh rose his hand in a waving gesture; "…two weeks are a long period? At least the beginning of described condition…?"

"When he lost blood before it can become like that…"

"Fine description for the fact he would go right for my throat. And he isn´t to be hold back by a chain or hook. I´m not sure I´m fast enough to run him out!" Josh´s smile was full of cynicism. He bent over Henry, installed a makeshift blood transfusion to the hand grip over the backside window and regulated the speed of the infusion with his thumb.

He was used to that kind of work and for the moment it helped to get himself a bit calmer, tilt his nervousness and win back control before his fantasies would take over.

He spread a woolen cover over Henry, controlled his pulse for the last time than he closed the side door of the car and opened the luggage trunk.

Josh grabbed two shovels and his rifle. Handled it over to Atlee.

"You can use it?", he indicated the weapon.

"No! Not really…", Atlee confessed with a sad smile.

"Uh ha! So it sticks to me like usual. When you´re a vampire who kills people…what´s the freekin´ difference between biting and shooting, uhm? The result is the damn same!" Josh grinned but took the rifle himself with a grunt.

"So! Where to go?"

_Two hours earlier- Grave yard_

Liam McLean came forward real fast with the digging and after a while only his head and shoulders were visible above the edges of the hole.

The darkness was as thick as a granite block.

Breathing had become a regular with such large distances between the single flat gasps that Aidan nearly forgot how it worked in general. If this would be the future… Lying in a way too small coffin, his hands tied up behind his back…

The first hours and days his body had been on fire, the veins screaming for blood, his lungs fighting for air, his skin becoming dry and wrinkled, wrapping around his muscles and bones like shrinking covers, first of leather then of some strange kind of paper with the strength of organic metal.

Strange enough the _Alien_, a mixture of skin, flesh and metal structures came into his mind. Bio-mechanic, bionic. Maybe they would all end in a thing like that: transformed into an alien life form as if this end was the true destination of any being on the surface of earth.

But he was down under.

Grounded.

Grounded to be transformed into something strange. Something wrong in relation to what he had once been.

The feeling in his hands had long died after a terrible period of tingling, burning and pain. As if his hands finally had resigned. Part for part his whole body would resign under the uselessness of any attempt to escape. His hearing, once sharp and precise had subsided under the weight of soundlessness. His whole mind started to shut down after days where he had tried to fix himself onto memories of his vampire existence, then his mortal life span and at last his mortal childhood. His wife, his son, all long gone. He tried to remember the sound of their voices, the touch of their skin, a laughter or crying.

All subsided under the depressing numbness and mental dullness of time going by in eternal darkness. No difference to take between day or night. No dawn, no sunrise. No voices, no noises, may they be that low they would be nearly inaudible. It wouldn´t matter if this gave him any orientation, any hint of hope in his timeless prison.

But there was simply …

…nothing.

The shovel hit solid ground. A dark Dong as the metal hit what could, by its sound, only be wood…

"I think I have reached the top lid of that coffin!" Liam McLean shouted upwards. He heard fast steps and then a weight crashed behind him into the hole. The man braced himself onto the man in front of him, his feet tingling from the straight jump downward. He had expected soft ground, earth under his feet but the hardness of the coffin lid under a thin layer of soil smashed through them up to his knees.

"Uhtsch…sorry…that was hard.", he gasped an excuse.

Then he fell onto his knees and begun to dig with bare hands, his fingers digging through the level of wet clay. The pieces of clay were flying out between his legs like when a dog was digging with his paws. Paul sped up until his fingertips scratched over polished black wood.

"Please get out, Paul!", McLean recommended to him.

"Why? Want to get him out by yourself? He´s MY prey! Not yours!", he fixed facts.

"Calm down, Paul! Calm down, please…it´s…we simply can´t open the lid in here when we both are standing on or directly beside it…No space in that fuckin´ hole…And…"

McLean collected his breath for a moment, then went on: "You, we don´t know in which condition this thing is after weeks in that damn box! I don´t…by all respect for you…I don´t want him to go right for the first living human throat he sees or smells when the lid is opened…"

"You mean…He would simply…try…to kill me?!"

His nerves were all on the edge…

"I´m totally earnest, Paul! Take this as a warning. You never ever dug up a grounded vampire, didn´t you?"

"Nope!", Paul had to confess, "But…he…I mean…"

"You mean nothing to him! Only a bag of blood on two legs. Meal on legs! That monster is blinded by sheer hunger for blood when I open the box…! There´s nothing human more in him whatever ! He´ll be an instinct ruled anything!..."

McLean shoved him upwards, out of the range of the coffin or any wild Aidan-_being_.

Then he squeezed himself in the narrow slit between ground and coffin.

His hands grabbed for the edge of the coffin lid…

Muffled sounds, from far above were stinging into his numb ears.

Aidan couldn´t identify their source nor the reason they were to disturb his holy silence. He simply lay more or less flat on his back and on his dead fingers. He didn´t want to hear anything anymore in the hope of eventually fall numb totally before his body would finally dissolve into nothing more than glittering…Stop! There was no light in here!...Dust.

The muffled dong, dong became the sounds of a scratching anything above him.

Scratching like claws over a wooden surface, speeding up hectically like a hungry dog digging into the smell of food. Led by its nose to the trace of meat.

Then the sounds stopped suddenly.

Only to be exchanged by…

…Voices.

Voices! That meant anything living! His numb mind took an unbearable time to verify what the word living meant. He was surprised to find his throat pressing out a grunt. A grunt after a time where he thought to have become deaf-mute. He thought his vocal cords could never produce a sound anymore. That they had dried out und shrunken to leathery nothings.

The grunt became a choking noise. Unequal to anything he ever had exhaled. His nostrils widened with an explosive effort. He groaned inhumanly and sucked in a scent…

There was life above.

_Mortal._

_Blood_!

Mortal meant always blood! And blood is life!

His mind exploded within his skull, his re-awakening consciousness. Aidan forced his brain to remember how movement worked. How muscles were to be tensed to force his body to rise up the very moment his prison would be open.

That can´t become true! A thought shot through his head. That can´t.

His imprisonment had driven him mad and now he hallucinated an opening coffin…

But anything behind his doubts, behind the discrepancy of what was and what would be forced the decision onto him to believe in the most impossible possibilities of all.

Seconds seemed to stretch into eternity…

…then darkness gave way to nighttime darkness.

Far brighter than the darkness of the prison.

He heard the sound of wood crashing onto solid ground and a face appeared beside him. Near to him. Inhuman. Vampire. Hegeman... when he was right with the silver glimmer of short hair that even in the solid darkness of a moonless night was visible for him with his awakening vampire sight.

His body wanted to jump right out of his prison. All muscles tensed to tear apart. He growled like a maddened animal, a rabid wolf when his fangs extended and his eyes bled black. His body disobeyed his duty. Raging hunger fought with weak muscles, a stiffened body that was tied and caught way too long in a box too small.

Aidan shouted something that was inscrutable. So inhuman even Paul shrunk back with fear.

Suddenly Paul was going panic. He fled the place a few steps to get safety between him and that thing that was to be rising out of the grave.

McLean bent down, grabbed with both hands under the shoulders that were bent backwards by the ties slung around the wrists. He lifted the weak shrieking body into an upright position, certain Aidan wouldn´t be able to stand on his own feet after weeks of lying in a box.

"Shut up, VAMPIRE!", he shouted at him with rural force. Then to Paul: "Keep away, Paul! That thing is mad from hunger!"

Paul suddenly had no problems to follow the command.

The scenario was so unreal, so disturbing. So much like all the cliché from the horror films he had seen in the past where humans set free vampires after centuries of imprisonment in a box or coffin. Everybody who ever saw such a film knew what it was going to be ending:

The human was sucked dry and dead by the rising monster! And he was the human at hand!

Aidan once had chucked up all blood after Josh, out of pity in a situation of despair, had tried to feed him with his werewolf ridden blood.

This vampire won´t drink from him again! But otherwise…

When the vampire was mad by hunger he possibly even won´t recognize him as enemy, as McLean, as vampire hunter. His sense of smell blinded by factors he even couldn´t speculate on. Hunger beyond recognition.

Paul felt the urge to move nearer to the hole with the coffin and the vampire in it. By what wasn´t his own will he stumbled nearer until he reached the edge of the rectangular pit.

His heart was racing and his fingers trembling with both fear and fascination. He stared down and even in the dark of the night he could see him. Or it?

What was sitting there in a box whose stench was overwhelming wasn´t the vampire he once had expected before.

A corpse like a once human shape. The skin shrunken back onto pure bone structures, grayish, powdered by a thin layer of dust, the face framed by a wild grown beard, the eyes sunken into the skull like blackened balls he more looked like an animated corpse than anything else, now that he seemed to breath. The vampire looked like the old mummies they had dug up after three thousand years in an Egyptian grave or pyramid. Paul pressed his hand onto his mouth to gulp back a scream. He stammered something, stumbling across his own feet when he did the same time want to flee and to stand his ground.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!", he stammered. "I…I didn´t know what…"

McLean turned his head to him, determined to pull him out of his tension.

"Get me the damn muzzle! Don´t stay there like a statue! I need the muzzle for him! Paul! Damn! Move your ass!"

"Bloo…ddd…" The word gurgled out between Aidan´s dried lips like a gush of water from a breaking dam. His eyes were ablaze, his view pure hunger. And Paul wondered why for hell or heaven McLean stayed right at the vampire´s side. Instead of running away for safety. His fingers fumbled for the leathery muzzle in the bag that he wore.

"Got that any faster? We don´t have time, Paul!", McLean commanded him. Slowly he lost patience with his new assistant. It may have been a mistake to heir him for the job. The man obviously had never before dug up a vampire who had been grounded over a long period. Damn it! They had to finish this! Next time he would think about another solution, he thought angrily. Rarely to get men who had the guts for what he was doing out of ardor and dedication.

The world and his humans had called him into duty and he felt much more in the line of a Van Helsing than any of the halfhearted wannabee´s this generation had brought up against the forces of darkness.

Ignoramuses, blinded by scientific bla bla, last led to be fascinated by these monsters like by an uncommon pet! He shook his head no.

Finally Paul reached him the muzzle, its straps made by leather and thin chains, well constructed to prevent one of those monsters from attacking and biting, once it was correctly placed and the straps fixed.

Aidan roared with hunger and rage, his body trembling. The smell of human blood was overwhelming and the hunger rummaged in his intestines, and worse, in his veins like a set free wild animal. He growled, his tongue a dry leathery thing in his mouth. His eyes bled black and his fangs glistening extremely white contrary to his sore lips that split open now when he screamed with craving.

The back side of a hand hit his face and his head fell backwards.

"SHUT UP you freakin´ monster!", McLean shouted at him, his human face a mask of hate and contempt, mixed with disgust. He kicked Aidan into the chest and in the narrow space of the grave his body fell back into the coffin, his head hit the edge of the heading section with such force that stars danced in front of his eyes. His head rumbling like the inside of a cement mixer.

Before Aidan could manage to move upwards again, McLean was over him, kneeling on his chest, his knees grabbing into his belly like trunks. He saw a fast movement and a hand dug into his dirty hair, pulled up his head and a dark and muggy anything was laid over his face. He felt a raw surface that scratched over his mouth, his nose and his cheeks.

Aidan gagged, panic shot upwards in him and he tried to scream in fear but the thing spread itself over his face, going to choke him. Hands fought with dangling straps and chains and within seconds Aidan felt them lock around his head. The man above him was quite used to the handling of it. His weakened body was numb from weeks of lying motionless in a damn narrow box. His muscles disobeyed when he tried to kick him off and finally his head fell back and he smelled old leather that laid itself on his face like the floppy moist wings of a bat when he breathed. The fear rising smell was mixed with that of metal and when Aidan caught his breath and could see more clearly he discovered that his face was covered by a muzzle with a kind of metal bar cage over his mouth.

Panic grabbed for his heart.

They had muzzled him like a dangerous dog!

The face of that man hung over him like a threat.

"Got you, monster! You won´t be going to bite me… to infect me with your devilish blood out of hell!" The man grinned viciously. Aidan let out a loud and hoarse growl, his fangs bared. When he tried to move McLean grabbed the muzzle at both sides of his head and Aidan heard a noise of a metal hinge that clicked into place and the metal and leather locked in so tight he couldn´t open his mouth more than a narrow slit.

"Move on or do anything to rouse my bad temper more and I´ll turn that hinges so tight they will squeeze your brain out of your head!" He laughed loud and pulled Aidan up with the strength of a demon like thing , threw him forward into the arms of Paul who grabbed him by his ruined and dirty shirt and pushed him forward. Aidan´s face hit the earthen surface of the walls and shells of cold and wet clay broke loose, intruding in his mouth through the metal cage. He choked and a gag reflex nearly made him chuck up. With much effort he forced it down.

Aidan helplessly felt himself pushed and pulled up from the grave and landed on the ground, face down. A feet pressed into his neck and he clenched his teeth under the pain that nearly threatened to make his head bursting. He heard the vicious laughter above him and than he was pulled up onto his feet and pulled roughly over the ground. The pulling went on until they reached a truck. Hands like steel rings hold him until Paul, the other man, opened the backdoor of the truck. He was thrown onto the loading space. McLean jumped up behind him and grabbed Aidan by his ties and threw him forward where he landed on the hard surface. Before Aidan could even react, metal hinges protested as a large iron bar door was slammed shut with brutal force. Keys turned in a lock and then darkness surrounded him.

Free from the prison of that grave, he was caught again…

McLean took out his cell and it took a few seconds until on the other end of the line a voice answered;

"You´re gonna tell me you have gotten what we need?

"Yeap! I´ve dug out one of this freaks you so dearly are waiting for!" McLean grinned with contempt. Freaks. Monsters. Demons in human shape. That was it what he called those damn vampires. In earlier days he had to stake them by himself. But his business companion had solved the problem on a very exclusive way. He hadn´t to get rid of them afterwards. Clean up after all was part of this arrangement.

"You´re getting me what I prefer?", the voice asked with cold business.

"You will be satisfied. Believe me!"

"What type? Male or female?"

"A male one. Tall. Looks like this thing is going to be a fierce opponent. In the moment he looks somewhat...out of the track. But I´ll get him right in form until you want him. They never look very well when you dig them out after weeks or months. I´ve gotten some worse before. I assure you he is ready when you tell it... When are you going for the next round?"

"Next Friday evening. One One Zero Zero p.m.! Bring him in two hours before. You know where! I´m gonna set the appointment into the net. Guess he´ll bring me some thousand bucks if he´s so good you promised me! That creepy types are betting on that freaks like the cretino stupido. Last time I made some ten thousand only by the bets, not to mention the tickets!" The voice at the other end laughed roughly.

Should these dorks get what they wanted: a kind of enjoyment they were dreaming of in their wildest dreams. Back to the roman Empire. Blood and games.

McLean switched his cell off and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans. He waved to his partner Paul.

"Let´s do a visit to the slaughterhouse. I´ve to get him refreshed a bit. Biever won´t take him as Count Mummy!"

Both men entered the car nearby. Aidan in his prison heard the engine roar up before the noise disappeared into the night.

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter 4_

_Night time – at Mother´s lair _

Atlee shrugged his shoulders.

Josh looked at him; "_Don´t_ tell me, you don´t know _where_…!" His voice sharper than intended. He directed, with his arm waving around in a circle, indicating the surrounding area. His finger finished onto his car; "_He_ can´t tell us. Right? Never disturb a sleeping man/vampire! What of your plan is working _anyway_? Irrespective you got us rid of your…what was it? Human guards or some of your all too eager companions?" Josh went angry.

He looked around with a mixture of anger and helplessness in his face.

"I know where the place is where they buried Aidan…Maybe you misunderstood me but I only hope that they didn´t dig him up to bury him anywhere else meanwhile… That´s the only thing I thought about loudly and so you mistook me possibly…"Atlee defended himself against the angry human.

"Okay. Okay! So I´m wrong…Sorry, but you guess I´m somewhat more than worried about my friend! Yes! Aidan is a dear friend of mine! Even if you won´t believe it how a freakin´ werewolf can make friend with a vampire! Call it loneliness! But sometimes rules of your kind are simply broken by odds you won´t simply understand! Like I for myself did not understand why the hell I´m still existing and living to tell anybody I like to…!"

Atlee stood silent and waited for the eruption to end. He didn´t want to interrupt this man/werewolf. He himself kept away from the strange and disrespectful way his kind handled other beings like the werewolves as a kind of enemy or worse, as slaves when they had the possibility to catch them and misuse them for their own unsavory intentions.

He never liked dog cage fights.

Neither it belonged to werewolves nor to dogs.

"He´s my only friend…!" Josh added with a weak voice. Then he stood stern, his face torn and he sucked in the air with a big gulp, then shook his head and his face turned to Atlee.

"`kay, tell me where…" He nodded to the dark forest around them.

"Please, follow me…", Atlee whispered in calm concentration and directed over to a small and in the dark nearly invisible foot path.

"A real abandoned place here. Seems she took the farthest point in the whole damn galaxy to hide from society…", he mumbled as he followed Atlee into the darkness. Rifle in one hand and shovel in the other, both grabbed like weapons to fight the Orks.

The slowly warming metal and the wooden shovel handle both giving him a feeling of safety.

"Whether I shoot them or I´m gonna beheading anyone stepping into my path to keep me away from Aidan!", he grunted under his breath.

The path became narrow and thin branches from low bushes and trees were hitting them in the face and the chest. Josh regretted it he wasn´t turned wolf now. Then it would have been much easier to run through the forest. Lower to the ground and faster on four paws.

Finally and abruptly the path opened to a clearing that spread over a low hillside. Dark night sky was arching over a place where low grass was neatly cut. A surprising difference to the area around. And when Josh stepped into the clearing he could barely make out a small figure in the shape of a kneeling angel that once must have been made of white marble.

Except for it there was nothing that indicated a grave, a burial or the less a grave yard.

Simply a grass field with a single figure.

Josh breathed deep than he directed to the angel.

"Is that the place, Atlee? It looks kind of…untouched… Can´t believe they had buried…him here…" The word buried let a knot rising in his throat.

Burial.

That sounded so…

…finally.

Atlee nodded.

"Yes! This is the place. And…"

Atlee stopped dead in his tracks. His heart started to beat faster when he smelled freshly dug up ground. He stared into the dark clearing, his eyes widening when he saw the heaps of earth around the place in front of the angel.

"What? What in all heaven happened here?", he gasped.

Even Josh with his normal eyesight could make out the heaps in the darkness. Heaps of fresh earth that looked so very wrong now related to what they had expected to find.

Anything was definitely wrong here!

Josh reached Atlee and both men were staring in disbelief into a gaping hole that once had been a grave. The coffin was empty, its lid thrown aside like by force.

"Do you think he dug up himself?", Josh stammered. If, then anywhere in the dark was hiding a very hungry vampire, blinded by hunger and rage.

"I don´t think so..." Atlee bent onto his knee, his finger stroked over the soil and he lifted his finger to his nose. Searched for a distinct scent. He sniffed at little particles of clay. Sniffed

again.

"What? Are you gonna act out the dog now, Atlee? I supposed you to be a vampire, not a bloodhound!", Josh growled. Skeptical he watched the Dutch testing the area. It took a few moments before he shook his head no.

"What? What..._No_?!" Josh looked at Atlee, saw his torn face. "And? Tell me! Did you find anything?"

"There are a lot of traces. Most of them old. Scents of too much persons and only a hint of them..."

"So your vampy-goes-doggy brought out nothing but old pee?" Josh stared at him for a moment and when no immediate answer came he turned round abruptly, threw his hands up in a gesture of angry resignation. "That´s what I spoke of!" Josh sounded really pissed off.

„The traces are old...but there are a lot of fresh footprints...it looks like at least two persons. Men I suppose...the size...", Atlee mumbled when he sank on his knee and stared at the impressions in the freshly broken ground. Josh came in behind him and bent down, looked at the footprints which stood in distance.

„These imprints are in a certain distance to each other...", Josh spoke out his thoughts. „It´s a trace in between...look...", he directed into the space between the two rows of footprints which looked like from boots; „...there are two deep drag traces... As if..as if one could be dragged along by two persons..."

The thought of it let his hairs rose.

Had anybody dragged a helpless Aidan away?

Vampires?

Humans?

The second option seemed to be more terrifying.

What if humans had dug him out? Were they arranged helpers of the Boston Family? Any other humans who dug him out more or less accidentally? Maybe searching that abandoned graveyard for any treasure and by this being confronted with a grounded and more or less still alive vampire? When this Suren had survived 80 years in the ground, then for sure Aidan was still alive after this way shorter period... Or? What if humans that were...were vampire hunters? Pictures from old films rose in Josh´s mind; Van Helsing staking the vampires. Helpless bodies during daytime sleep, pierced with wooden stakes. The blood gushing out from a broken chest, a twitching body, dissolving into dust. Or beheaded and burnt up with the head between the feet...

Atlee stared at Josh who stood stiffened, his face suddenly pale even in the darkness, his hands trembling..

„Josh!? What´s up,hm?"

Josh lifted his head, his gaze uncertain. His left hand rose and he stroked his hair, his lip trembling when he answered.

„I...I got a horrifying...idea, Atlee! What if anybody kidnapped him?" His voice became more forceful unintentionally. His eyes got this glance that Aidan knew all to well: When Josh tried to be determined out of fear.

Atlee could not decipher his expression but he caught that distinct scent of fear that his body emanated. When the human was lead by fear it could become more than difficult. Humans never reacted rationally under these conditions.

_Who keeps a pet has to feed it..._

The car reached a large business park. Liam McLean drove into an alley and stopped at the back door of a large building. Both men got out of the car and McLean directed to the door.

„C´mon, Paul! We are going to get the stuff and left off as fast as we came in! No long time necessary! Smith told me they had gotten in a whole herd of cattle ready to turn into T-bone steaks! Guess the whole hall is swimming in blood...", he grinned and Paul swallowed down a wave of disgust.

McLean didn´t miss his facial expression.

Typical, he thought. These kids...not used to reality! Watching TV all night long with ghosts, zombies and that whole splatter stuff. Until it comes to handle a real monster. And to feed it! Start run with your tail between your legs!

„Go on!", he urged Paul when he saw him hesitating in his tracks. Paul looked at him and he shrugged his shoulders, took a deep breath and followed McLean into the hall. Inside under the ceiling hung halves of cattle fresh from the slaughter. A man in a blood stained, once white, suit waved him to follow him. In a tiled room he grabbed a large can from a table and gave it to McLean.

„Is it fresh?", McLean asked and looked at the man with his brows knitted.

„Fresh as usual. Keep the can closed or it will run away on its feet!", He laughed roughly.

„Alive! I need it alive, Smith!"

„What are you gonna do with it? Gonna make a transfusion to a cow on your farm or are you recently using it for protein food in sports?" Smith grinned and shook his head. McLean sometimes became strange. But what do I care for? None of my business, he thought when the bills changed hands. „Tell me when you need next time!", Smith turned away and looked after both men when they left the room. Then he turned over to his work.

Splitting cattle rib cages into T-Bone steaks. The noises of the axe reverberating from the tiled walls.

McLean put the can into a cooling unit he had hidden behind the seat back of the driver´s seat. Paul entered the car and they drove back to the place where the truck was parked deep in the woods. When they reached the clearing with its large hemlocks surrounding a place that merely was a clearing but more a road through the woods with a lay-by, McLean stopped and opened the side door. He took out the cooling unit and a bottle that was locked with a screw cap. He opened the bottle and filled a syringe with the liquid, then he gave the bottle over to Paul.

„What is it?" Paul asked and sniffed at the bottle neck. A strong scent of garlic let him shrug back. „Garlic? What the fuck are you doing with garlic? Protect you from our captive? Or paralyze him like good old Count Dracula?"

„Au contraire! I´m gonna turn him up a bit!" McLean grinned devilish and poured the content of the syringe into the can, locked it and shook it slightly, threw Paul the cap. „Close it! Don´t wanna get lose of it!", he warned Paul and then he went over to the truck, opened the door. He climbed onto the loading space, switched on the bright light inside.

A deep growling from the corner of the cage answered the bright glare.

Aidan growled deep from the core of his throat. The bright light blinded his eyes which were not used to bright light since they had sealed him in the coffin. He could barely see anything. His eyes burnt and would have shed tears if there would be left enough blood within his body.

When his eyesight became better a bit he could make out the man who before had pulled him through the woods. He was holding something in his hand. A bag or a flexible bottle. It doesn´t matter. The only thing that mattered was the strong smell that emanated from the container.

His nose caught the scent.

His intestines, his veins, his whole body craved with hunger. The scent threatened to drive him mad and he growled. His fangs dropped and his eyes bled black. He pulled himself onto his feet and with preternatural speed he jumped for the iron bars. His hands clung to the cold bars and he tried to shake them wildly. This only movement had weakened him so much, the shaking turned over to a desperate grib in an attempt to keep himself upright. Aidan turned his head. His face pressed against the bars.

McLean grinned with contempt.

„Are you hungry, vampire? Wanna get to the blood? For sure! I know you those creatures. I´ll feed you, monster! I´ll feed you and you will obey to my command!", he laughed, his voice dripping with cynicism. He let the container dangle in front of a growling Aidan. Near enough to drive him mad and far enough to keep him from grabbing it by any way. His hands were still tied behind his back.

Aidan couldn´t think clearly anymore.

The smell was overwhelming. A thick red cloud. Blood. The world was red. Red shading his mind and he hunger was raging within his drained vessels like a savage fire, burning with lava heat. Red. Blood. The world was a red cloud. The human in front of him was blood. A bag of blood on two legs. Food. Nothing more. He meant nothing to him but food! He wanted to grab the man. Bury his fangs into the warm flesh and drink. Drinking without end. Until the heart would stop. Until his raging hunger was satisfied.

And his hunger was beyond imagination.

McLean knew that. He knew these monsters and he knew how to get him by his hunger. Once the poisoned blood was offered the vampire would drink. Blind from hunger, unable to be suspicious against the offer. Unable to stop before it would be too late. Unable to stop before his heightened senses would take the difference.

The taste of garlic.

Garlic made these vampires their eyes bled black and their fangs drop irreversibly. Would set the wild monster free. The only remedy to inverse the vamped-out effect was feverfew, a herb.

The poisoned blood would the vampire push up enough to make him ready for the fight that was going to happen on Friday.

Hungry vampire against a human opponent, trained to kill vampires.

With cage fights or pit fights there was a lot of money to make. Fights like in the wrestling circus. Like Hulk Hogan versus Count Dracula. He grinned when he looked directly into the face of Aidan.

„C´mon! C´mon! Get it! Come and get what you want!", his voice all teasing. The container was dangling directly in front of the bars. Aidan stumbled forward. His feet disobeyed from weakness and he growled when he fell to the ground. Directly in front of the bars. His face hidden behind that mask, the muzzle, torn with rage and hunger. The cage like metal thing in front of his mouth preventing him from biting.

McLean waved with the container. The smell driving Aidan mad. McLean crouched in front of the bars where Aidan´s face was pressed to the bars like that of a hungry dog.

„Come on! Hungry? Hungry! Yeah! C´mon Play nice and I´ll feed you...little monster...Uh, get it...", he shoved the slim tube at the end of the container through the bars and between the leather and iron construction of the muzzle. Aidan growled and gasped, grabbed the tube with his fangs and began to suck. After the first urgent gulps the feeding went wild.

Aidan sucked without control.

The blood shot into his throat and he gulped blindly. The taste was overwhelming and he sucked and sucked. The container was empty soon and he sucked a last time at it...

A strange pain shot through his intestines which weren´t by far satisfied. He choked and his stomach burnt like fire. Aidan took that for a sign of his urges.

Before his blood shaded mind got it.

Garlic!

The blood had been poisoned.

Aidan fell to the ground. He groaned from pain and felt his eyes bled black. He tried to retract his fangs but he couldn´t. He choked and tried to turn over desperately but his weakened and drained body disobeyed.

McLean stood directly in front of the bars and looked down onto the helplessly cramping vampire.

„This herb works wonders!", McLean spat at Paul and grinned viciously. „Refreshing his vampire inside without the need to feed him too much. They want him hungry but not as a mummy from Egypt!", he directed into the makeshift cage that was used for transporting and storing his prey until it was sold over to the Arena.

Aidan groaned, curled up on the cold steel ground, knees pressed to his belly, his face a mask of despair. Gasping, then groaning sounds came out of his mouth.

„You´ll get it over soon, vampire! Until Friday I´ll get you ready for the Arena, don´t worry!", McLean grinned.

Paul directed to that curled up heap of misery of a vampire; „What...if he doesn´t tolerate it?" He sounded a bit concerned. Not out of pity but he was afraid that, if the vampire got harmed before he would be sold over, they won´t get their money. They had paid a lot of money and spent a lot of time to get together the information that had led them to the grave. It hadn´t, like usually, being simple to differ useful information from nonsense. A lot of people talking nonsense, speculations instead of real information. And now they were going to get their costs in plus additional profit. If not this vampire turned out a white elephant. Mister Arena was only interested in perfect contract goods.

Paul silently began to count up how much money he would get for himself from the deal after deliverance. He had went into partnership with McLean only out of profit. He didn´t care for with what kind of goods he made his made. Only profit counted. When McLean had come to him he had thought him mad when he talked about vampires and vampire hunting. But the idea turned out quite well. Arena fights against any captives were illegal and with illegal stuff one was going to made the most profit. People with enough money paid a lot for unusual, extraordinary entertainment. For money you´ll get everything. All a question of the price.

„Okay, lets go! I have more business to do!", McLean stated and turned away from the vampire. He checked the locks of the bars and then he climbed down from the loading space and they slammed the heavy door wings shut, locked them with care.

Darkness swept over Aidan when the doors shut. He stared helplessly at the doors and then he let out a loud growl of anger.

But for sure he was anywhere out of Boston and he could scream until his lungs went out of air; nobody would hear him...

Arena... The man had said anything about an arena. In arenas they normally did sports or some sort of fights. Get him hungry but not as a mummy of Egypt... That sounded worse. Like the dog fight they had Josh put into. Werewolf against werewolf. It had cost him a lot to convince Bishop in doing arrangements, tricks, so Josh would win and survive the fight. Aidan groaned desperately, his knees pulled up to his belly he was lying in the darkness and his vampire eyes staring useless into the even to him stygian darkness. Finally he sighed when the pain in his body subsided and gave way to the signs of exhaustion. The blood hadn´t been enough to strengthen him and tilt the signs of his underground imprisonment. Waiting in the coffin had become a torment. Now that he was out of that damn grave he found himself into the next trouble, much worse if they were going to kill him in an arena...

Had Mother her fingers in this pie?

Atlee bent deeper to the trace, his fingers felt over the ground. When he lifted his face he looked concerned. Josh watched him with matching feelings.

„This trace from dragging...deep and narrow at the ground. Can be from the tips of shoes for example, if you drag a person along by the arms or shoulders...", he suggested.

„Okay! Then what are we doing here any longer? Let´s go after him!", Josh directed to the woods, his finger slightly shaking with excitement; „Let´s go, Atlee!", he urged the Dutch who rose to his feet. Josh´s fingers clung tightly around the gun barrel. The cool steel of the weapon gave him a feeling of safeness.

Atlee nodded finally and they followed the foot prints. Josh´s head down like that of a dog, following the traces. They ended at a road and Josh stared in both directions, his left hand clinging to the rifle.

„Damn! Where are they gone to?" He rammed his foot into the ground with frustration. „Where does that road go?"

„This road goes through the woods and as I´m reminding it goes to Boston... When the footprints are ending here it can mean that they went away by car...", Atlee explained and he stepped in the middle of the road, looked down in both directions. His eyes fixed to the lane. He went along the road a few meters then he came back, directed to a thin line of clay fragments. „There had someone driven away by a truck."

„What makes you so sure of it?" Josh sounded skeptical.

„As you know I´m living outside the cities in farm area. Clay traces on asphalt lanes are familiar to me. From carriages to tractors and agricultural engines... And these traces look like from truck wheels. We still have to follow them..."

„You earnest? I can´t barely see a thing in this darkness...", Josh growled angrily and stared into the woods. He was angry about the fact that Atlee was so much better in simple night-vision and he was to some certain degree dependent from the Dutch. If it would be Full Moon and he would be turned werewolf it won´t be any problem for him to follow the traces. So he grabbed up his rifle and followed Atlee down the road. They walked a few minutes before Atlee suddenly directed into a side road.

„WHAT? " Josh shouted who was a few steps behind Atlee.

Atlee turned around, his finger moving up to his lips, indicating Josh to be quiet. When Josh arrived at him, Atlee grabbed him by a shoulder and bent nearer to Josh, directed with his index finger into the dark road.

„Be quiet! " he whispered; „Look...there´s a truck! „ His voice so low it was nearly inaudible. He shoved Josh into the bushes and followed him. „Maybe we have found what we´re searching for..."

„But who would be going to hide a truck with...with a kidnapped victim so near to the grave yard? "

„Anybody who feels safe with it. Remember how far from Boston we are out here! Barely anybody knows that this house with its cellar is existing. It´s not marked on any maps. Only anybody who knows from it will find it. If not a wanderer who ends up there by accident, coincidently... Mother did not chose this place out of nothing...", Atlee whispered.

„Not even a comfortable place to hide from the public...", Josh grinned when he remembered the simple and battered inside.

„Safety is worth it. A sleeping place needs to give safety, not comfort..." Atlee made a careful step forward, indicated Josh to stay back in the bushes and then he scurried alongside the road, hiding in the bushes every few steps.

Atlee stopped after a few steps, his vampire senses all alert. He could see, listen and smell better now than Josh in his human shape. To walk near the truck could become very risky when done by anybody with lesser sharp senses. He listened to the surroundings, searched for a scent or a sound from a human being like heart beats, breath or any cracking noise from a branch nearby or in the farer distance. He switched off the beats from Josh´s heart that were so strong and fast, speeding up by nervousness and uncertain excitement, underlain with fear. For sure Josh was waiting behind him, overly eager to go, to do anything but waiting. But he wouldn´t call or beckon to him before the situation was secured.

Step by step Atlee went nearer to the truck. There were no humans around as far as he was able to check. And this was a large area.

Suddenly his nose caught a distinct scent.

Blood.

Human?

A scent so fragile a human would have missed it, but his senses were naturally fixed onto it. His eyes went down to the dark asphalt and there it was! He couldn´t have mistaken it. A little drop of drying blood, so small it was barely visible, the less in the dark. But for him it was bright and glistening like a halo lamp in the dark. He bent onto one knee, his finger touched the trace and he raised his index finger to his nose.

Human? No! Cattle! That was from a cow. He took another scent and shrugged back. The scent of the blood was poisoned by garlic. Who under heaven fed garlic to cows? The scent too definite to be generated by a feeding supplement. This was pure stuff. No one was going to use garlic in cattle raising. But there was another reason to make use of it!

Garlic could be used to poison vampires, at least those of his kind. Would drive them wild.

Atlee followed the scent and it led him definitely to the truck. When he came nearer he listened, just to found the area safe and then he went to the back doors of the truck. They were locked. Surely. No one would let the loading space of a truck, full of goods, open to everybody.

His fingers felt for the hinges of the lock. An iron padlock secured the heavy bars. Three equal locks secured the doors. A bit much for a truck that was left anywhere out in nowhere, he thought. He turned his head, back to Josh and indicated him to stay where he was. That was his task!

When his face turned back to the massive doors the cold wind made the air moving from inside and his nose caught a familiar scent.

Old, moldily and somewhat sweet. The smell of old decay. Old…death. It smelled like…coffin. Heavy from clay and moisture. Under this the smell of a body that had missed showers or bathroom over a long period. There was a hint of an option that the truck carried a coffin with a dead homeless, for what purpose so ever… But that didn´t look like a van from a burial service. They had transported the coffins of the Dutch Elders with a truck but they hadn´t emanated this smell because they were home to living beings. Not the dead.

Or this was some kind of mass burial transport. But without a cooling unit? Even in fall or winter they would make use of one to prevent spreading stench of rotten bodies all-over.

Atlee rose, his nose pressed to the narrow slit that was between the two door wings. Then he twitched. He heard a heart beating. Slowly and heavy. The scent of dirt and mold became stronger, mixed with somewhat he knew and would differ from all other out of a mass of people.

"AIDAN?", he summoned him in a low voice.

From inside came a terrifying growl. Wild and desperate. Full of anger and fear.

"Aidan? It´s you?" The sounds from inside became more wild like that from an angry animal in a cage, muffled by what he couldn´t decipher. Anything was moving inside like a body that shuffled like from weakness and the attempt to run free. A discrepancy. A thud, like from a body that crashed into anything massive what seemed to be of metal.

"Aidan?! It´s me! Atlee! Can you hear me…?", he tried again.

The growl that came from inside the loading space was wild and blind from raging hunger. Atlee knew all to well what that meant: The vampire inside the truck was raging and unpredictable, incalculable. A danger to Josh definitely. For him…difficult to calculate. Aidan had never been an enemy to him. They had gone together through that werewolf hunt and Atlee kept himself from getting involved to deep into the vicious ways of some of the Elders.

Atlee turned around and waved to an eagerly and impatiently waiting Josh. Like estimated, it took Josh only a few seconds until he nearly crashed into Atlee.

"Easy…easy, Josh!", he tried to calm him, hearing the fast and pressing breath. "Okay, calm down, Josh! I think…"

"Aidan? Is it him? Is he inside? We have to get him out!", Josh urged and wanted to grab for the locks. A hand fell onto his. With determined pressure his hand was pulled away from the lock.

"WHAT? Do you want to keep me from freeing my friend, Dutch?" Josh sounded more than angry. Simply aggressive. The look in Atlee´s eyes wasn´t the one to calm his temper. "What?! Don´t make me!", he growled and tried to free his hand with pure strength. The grip became tighter.

"STOP JOSH! I don´t want to hurt you…"

"Then let. Me. Go."; Josh barked and he tried to get free from the Dutch, but the fingers were like bands of steel. Like when Henry had caught him in desperation.

"JOSH! I don´t want to hurt _you_. And I don´t want _him_ to hurt you!", he warned Josh, his glance all determined.

"Him! Him what? What?", his face turned around, to the doors, his head tilted to the side angrily; "Aidan is in there and we get him out!" He gasped. "And don´t dare to tell me anything else, you…you…" He searched for the word. But he was whirled around when Atlee placed him suddenly a few steps backwards on the road. Josh looked simply surprised. He had forgotten which strength these vampires had. Aidan had never used such force on him. Not his friend.

This truck.

When Aidan was trapped inside. Anybody had…

Henry! He was in danger too if…

They had to solve that more than fast. No time to lose when they wanted to get both vampires home and into safety!

In a whoosh Atlee stood in front of him, his face a grim mask. He directed to the truck.

"Aidan is in there! They…I think they…I smelled garlic! He is raging in there! He must be terribly starved, Josh! I think…he´s kind of out of control!...Josh! We have to be fast and we have to be very careful!" The sounds that came out of the truck were all too convincing.

The noises drove Josh a cold shudder down his spine. They were good friends. True friends. He had cared for Aidan when Bishop had tried to kill him but that was definitely different from what they had to expect . When Atlee was right, and Josh had no doubts that the Dutch knew about what he was talking…, then Aidan maybe was out of mind. Unable to differ enemy and friend.

"You…you quite sure…it´s Aidan?", Josh tried desperately to make sure they won´t be on the wrong trace. What, if any other vampire…anyone who wouldn´t know him and/or Atlee, was caught inside? They needed to free Aidan! But if it was another vampire…another one in despair? Josh knew that there were a whole folks of vampire in and around Boston. Since he was turned werewolf they world he had once known ended. Only to wake up in a reality he hadn´t thought to be anyway possible before.

He had kind of died and finally risen in the _Otherworld _where the paranormal was normal.

"I´m as sure as one can be in the situation momentarily…" Atlee answered slowly and shrugged his shoulders.

"Ninety nine percent?" Josh looked very tensed. Atlee shook his head.

"Rather eighty percent… I caught a familiar scent, from Aidan…but what if he´s kind of unconscious and the noises are coming from another…a second vampire? When I´m right and we have to do with persons who…hunt vampires and keep them captive for what purpose so ever…It could be that this truck is full of captives! Young orphans would go into a trap easier than the old and experienced Council members for example…" He sounded very thoughtful.

Josh directed to the truck.

"But Aidan said that the orphans were…immolated…"

"If you consider every vampire who´s not member of the Family or an related group, like ours, an orphan, then it´s very easy to say that there are enough orphans outside. As long as they hide themselves from The Boston Vampire Family and won´t attract their attention, there are good chances for staying outside any community…Henry did nearly eighty years and he´s still alive!"

Oh my God!, Josh thought. They had Henry left in the car, parked near by the abandoned house. What, if the who-so-ever came back there in search for more vampires? Henry won´t be able to fight for himself…

"Henry is…", Josh gasped.

"I don´t think that whoever caught Aidan, will go back to the cellar or the place where your car is hidden… He would come back to the truck, to his…precious…prey!", Atlee stated.

"Okay! Let´s stop that useless back and forth! No more discussions! I´m tired of it. That makes the freakin´ nothing. When it comes to me: I´m for breaking that damn padlocks open and we will see what´s inside!" Josh grabbed his rifle more tight, moved a few steps backwards and aimed his target. Ready to shoot down the locks. His finger pulled the trigger slowly but before he could fire, Atlee pulled the gun out of the line.

"Stop!", he hissed; "That shot will be heard everywhere around! We´re in a forest, not amidst a noisy city!"

"Damn. Sorry, you´re right!", Josh confessed a bit ashamed.

The noises that came from inside the truck rose. Obviously the whoever inside had heard them and became more wild and urgent.

Josh nodded to the truck; "Sounds like we shall hurry with opening or rather flee as long as we´re still alive…!" He sounded determined and bitter. Josh licked his lips nervously and set his rifle down. "What now?" He sounded desperate.

"I´ll break the locks, Josh! The very moment the doors are open you better go off sight! That noises….", he directed to the truck; " sounding terrifying any way. I´m not sure…"

Josh stepped back, aimed his rifle just to feel safe. As if a rifle would stop a raging vampire. Aidan had told him the story of turning Henry in WW I. He had been brought into the medical unit after he was riddled with bullets while taking down a whole trench of soldiers alone…

No good idea to confront him now!

Atlee nodded, then his hands went for the iron locks. He pulled, his fingers grabbed around the metal rings and he pulled with sheer force. The metal finally broke and the threw the parts away.

"Go, Josh! Keep off range!", he warned the human and opened the doors.

An all overwhelming stench came out of the dark and the noises became a horrifying growling when anything inside obviously fell into raging the very moment the doors were open.

Aidan couldn´t make out the figure when the damn bright glare of the lamps exploded into his eyes. He screamed from pain, the glare like a white fire in his bled black eyes, the pupils maximum widened by the poisonous garlic. When Rowlins thought he would handle him simply like a helpless captive then he would be terribly wrong. Aidan was absolutely determined to make it as difficult as possible for the man to get him out of his prison and into that fucking arena or what it was to be. To vivid his memories of poor Josh, turned werewolf, and forced in a battle for life or death with another werewolf.

Aidan bared his fangs, growling like a rabid animal. His hands were numb and his legs to weak to jump for the iron bars of the cage, the rope was cutting into his swollen wrists and he felt warm blood running down into the palms of his hands. The smell of his own blood was driving him nearly mad from hunger. The metal construction and the leather stripes of that damn muzzle were cutting into his neck, his cheeks and his mouth area when he opened his mouth in an instinctive attempt to bite or grab anyone with his teeth.

A shadow was climbing into the truck and came nearer. A black shape in a fog of burning white light that flooded the loading space. The shadow reached the bars and Aidan finally freaked out. By any means he managed it to stumble to the bars, his face shot forward and he smelled…

…vampire.

Any fucking vampire who was going to take him for the arena. Paying for enjoyment! Mother´s enjoyment. No one else could be that vengeful as her, would have the guts to punish her own kind in a game of death. Mother was mad. And the vampire her servant!

He couldn´t see the face, half blinded from the glare, could only smell the typical scent of his own kind. And country side. A distinct smell of hay, grass and clay.

Dutch!

Bastards! Selling their own kind to Mother.

Aidan growled, his face behind the muzzle torn with blind rage. The hunger was raging in his guts and veins with primal force. He pressed his face to the bars, his mouth open, saliva dripping from the fangs and mixing with the blood that came from his sore and split lips.

"AIDAN! Aidan, it´s me! Atlee!", the Dutch shouted at him, trying to drown the growling that came from Aidan. "AIDAN! We are here to get you free! Free! You understanding? We bring you out of here! Josh is here!"

The muzzle, it´s mouth-part, was pressed through the bars. Aidan´s breath came in shallow gasps, fast and forceful, his fingers fought with the ties on his back and he winced with pain. The skin was torn long ago and all he felt was a burning and the slippery moisture of thin rivulets of blood that dripped in his hands. His growling became a scream. Desperate, angry.

"JOSH! Come in! I gonna need you here! And bring in the blood! Hurrieder! JOSH…!", Atlee shouted, face halfway turned to the opening.

Josh was pulled out of his tension. He ran to the truck, the cooling unit was thrown into the loading space and was slithering over the steel bottom. Josh climbed up behind, a helping hand grabbed him from above and he was more lifted in one move than climbing with support. Atlee supported his wavering figure and deposited him on the floor.

"Thank…you…", Josh gasped, a bit out of breath and his barely heaed leg made itself remarkable. He turned around and his eyes widened in shock when he realized what was going on in this truck…

Aidan was crunched behind massive iron bars of what was a large sized cage, his face hidden behind a metal and leather muzzle like the head of a rabid or highly dangerous dog. A wild beard was visible between what the muzzle let open. His hair dirty, the tendrils dusty and grown longer than Josh had in mind.

"Aidan! Oh my GOD!", Josh shouted and threw himself forward to the cage that took half of the size of the truck´s loading space.

It was clearly designed to hold strong creatures captive. Werewolves, vampires, tigers or what else.

"AIDAN! My GOD! We must get that thing off him!", Josh shrieked and directed to the face of his friend. His fingers fumbled through the bars in an attempt to open the straps.

"I must get that off of you!", he gasped.

"Josh!" Atlee´s voice behind him.

Josh didn´t listen. He didn´t want to.

"JOSH!...Josh, be careful, he is…" Atlee again.

Josh caught hold of a buckle, his fingers trembling. That strap was pulled close far too tight. The crap must hurt like hell, he thought.

"Josh, he is…"

Josh shut the voice off consciously.

Aidan growled dangerously.

"It´s okay! I have it! Soon, Aidan!", Josh whispered. He pulled at the buckle to loosen it.

Aidan felt the strap tighten. Pain. His lips sore…and…

The metal cage in front of his mouth got loose and with rural force Aidan suddenly whirled his head around the moment he felt his mouth becoming free. Fangs glistening in the glare and they snapped close in a flash, tightening around Josh´s hand.

Josh felt them pierce through skin and muscles and he screamed in surprise. His scream rose to a scream of pain when the fangs closed around his hand, deep in the palm and back of his hand.

In a reflex he tried to pull his hand free but Aidan´s mouth hold him tightly.

"LET. ME. GO! Aidan! Let go!", Josh winced under the pain. He felt the blood dripping down his wrist. Despite the pain he tried to free his caught hand with the fingers of the other hand. Suddenly Aidan screamed with pain and the fangs let go. The head fell back and Aidan´s body went to the ground when Atlee grabbed him by the neck and forced the weakened vampire down.

Aidan stared at him, on his knees, gasping with despair. The hunger raging within him, a hint of a taste of Josh´s blood on his lips, in the cave of his mouth, firing up the hunger to an unbearable level. Within a second he was up again and at the bars again. So fast…

Josh managed it to pull his hands back, out of the cage, seconds before Aidan´s fangs snapped for him again. His face plunging into the bars with a hurtful _Dong._ Aidan growled, his face a mask of pure hunger.

"Oh my God!", Josh gasped, helplessly staring at his friend who was clearly out of the tracks. Aidan must be mad from hunger, he thought.

Much more worse than imagined.

The same like with Henry!

"STOP! Aidan! STOP! You´re gonna hurt you! Stop it! Calm down… please!" Josh wasn´t sure if Aidan would hear him, if his brain was capable of understanding anything rational beyond his murderous hunger… "Aidan! You can´t drink from me! Remember? Remember it, Aidan! You chucked up all and got cramps! I. AM. Werewolf! Got it!?"

Aidan stared at him, his tongue licking the bars like a desperate thirsty animal. Josh felt so pity, so sorry for him. They had to get him out of it fast. But Aidan was…he was his friend. And he was so incalculable in the moment. So very far from normal.

Blood. Words. Werewolf. Words. Werewolf…werewolf…the word drifting through his fogged mind. What did it mean? Werewolf?! Can´t…can´t drink from. Never drink from werewolves. Who the hell had taught him that? His mind exploded with memories. He…drinking. Cramps. On the ground. Blood all over… Panic was rising within him. Fear. Can´t drink! Can´t! But he was so hungry. So hungry…

Josh looked into the distorted face of his once friend. Still friend, his mind corrected him. Aidan was far from normal now but that didn´t touch the fact that Aidan was his friend. And would be forever, as long as he would live. Not eternally. He wasn´t vampire! He was werewolf! We are different. We are deadly enemies. We live together, we are friends. Against all odds. Josh put his hands on the bars, pushed them through the lattice of that makeshift predator cage. His right hand stained with his blood, the puncture wounds burning where Aidan´s fangs had penetrated the skin down to the muscles. It had been an accident, no bad will he told to himself. Aidan had him thought to be an enemy, his mind shaded by whatever whoever may have done to him beyond the cage and that damn muzzle. Maybe he had been tortured before, after they had dug him up, he thought.

"Aidan, please…It´s me! Josh! I´m here to get you free! Calm down please! Please! So that…that I can give you the urgently needed blood! I have blood for you! Some you can drink without becoming badly ill! Do you understand me? Please! Aidan! Don´t leave me!" An urgent plea. Josh stared at him, bent deeper and his hand went down, going nearer to Aidan´s temple.

"Josh! Be careful…please…", he heard the Dutch, Atlee, behind him. His voice a soft whisper, more a warning, not meant to rap his knuckles. He sounded concerned after what had happened recently.

Aidan was staring at him, his eyes black, the pupils so wide he had never seen before on him. Behind the hunger, behind the raging animal within him and the black color of his eyes, Josh could see another thing:

Fear.

And shame.

When Aidan was poisoned by garlic in human food accidentally, it hadn´t been that worse like now. Whoever had done this to him, he must have known the effect and had taken advantage of it by an overdose, to get the effect Josh and Atlee were confronted with now. A gone wild and uncontrollable vampire, meant to be used for any devilish purpose… Josh didn´t know if the garlic struck Aidan with any pain, with nausea and vomiting. For sure Aidan was in pain from the ties and the far too tight bound muzzle.

"Does he have pain from…I mean…from the garlic? Any pain? Intestines or…?", Josh asked Atlee with a whisper.

"I don´t think so! But he´s poisoned!", Atlee answered with a low voice.

"Will a lot of blood do? I mean…to neutralize it?" Josh had less experience with it. Last time they had used herbs, mostly chamomile.

"Blood will help but best is Mudderkrauwd…", Atlee replied.

"Mudder…what?" Josh stared at him; "You and your dialect…what is it? Again! I don´t speak your Dutch…" Josh shook his head in disapproval.

"Sorry. Mother´s herb. Tanacetum parthenium. You call this Feverfew. It´s best against that kind of poisoning…"

"So far! I don´t have that stuff at hand! As usual. Who the hell thinks about vampire-anti-vamped-out-antidote? I run a household, not a damn vampire hospital!", Josh grunted. Still his home had become a vampire hospital of its special kind before. And would become again soon! I don´t get rid of my nurse´s profession, even when I´m out of work, he thought.

His hands went down the temples of Aidan. He was fully aware of the potential danger he was in but this time Aidan kept calm and he simply muttered deep in his throat and chest. More equal to the sounds a cat could make.

"How the hell do we break this bars, its locks?", Josh cursed while he was comforting Aidan to simply calm him down a bit, to make him feel safe with his friends.

"Normally one would have the keys to it. This bars are very strong, the locks too. I´m not sure if I can break them with my bare hands…", Atlee confessed after a look on what looked like massive steel.

"Then we need a tool, a crowbar…anything like that…Make yourself useful and look if you find anything we can make use of…", Josh urged him while he went on with stroking Aidan´s temple and cheeks. Aidan seemed to become more calm and rational a bit. Josh felt over the temples, the abrasions on the skin where the raw leather straps had scratched into the skin. The skin felt dry and cold. Surely a result of the lack of blood. Josh got the difference to Henry´s way too warm skin temperature now the more stronger.

Henry was…

He had to wait now. They would be back to him soon. Back the very moment they would have set Aidan free. The Aidan who was so exhausted now that he simply was lying still against the iron bars, his breath harsh and in gasps..

"We´ll get you out of here soon. Atlee searches for anything to break these bars...", he nodded over to Atlee who went through the loading space, pulling boxes away. Digging through a heap of old clothing and large bags of raw material.

"Here´s nothing of use! I´ll search through the drivers cabin!" He disappeared with vampire speed and Josh heard him breaking open the door on the driver´s side. Noises from the front told him that Atlee was fast and but ruthlessly going through the belongings. He really has a talent for chaos, Josh thought and smiled silently. After a further row of noises Atlee appeared at the edge from the loading space, a grin in his face when he waved with what he found: a large crowbar.

"That´ll do!", Josh stated. He smiled at Aidan who stared at him in helpless disbelief. Hopefully his mind isn´t damaged by the long time in that grave. To be buried alive could drive men mad. Can´t imagine what he went through during this time. Memories can be disastrous when you´re locked in with no hope for release or escape...

Josh and Atlee both grabbed the crowbar and placed it between the bars and the rings of the first lock.

"On Three...One...Two...Three!" They pulled and with a loud noise the lock broke. They repeated the action with the second lock. The broken metal dropped to the ground and Josh let the crowbar fall and fumbled with the door bar. The door opened with a rusty nose in its hinges.

Out of the corner of his eye Aidan saw the door open.

He was free!

He wanted to crawl to the door but he was to weak. He rose to his knees and Atlee pulled him out of the prison. Josh bent over him, his eyes wandering over the body of his friend, ignoring the strong smell that rose from his dusty and rumpled clothes.

"He needs blood!"; Josh urged.

"But not here in the truck! To dangerous if the owners are coming back! We will get him out and into the woods. There you can feed him... Let´s go!", Atlee demanded. He grabbed Aidan under the shoulders and pulled him to the edge of the loading space. He climbed down and together with Josh he managed it to pull Aidan out of the truck. He let him glide to the ground.

"Get the blood! Close the doors. I don´t want us to pull attention on the fact that the doors are broken...We have to be fast..."

"Only to mention...My leg has barely healed...I can´t take his whole weight alone, Atlee...", he directed to the motionless vampire. Atlee nodded with agreement, grabbed Aidan under the shoulders and pulled him to the woods. He was much faster than Josh ever could have been.

Josh closed the doors to hide the fact they had been here and he grabbed the cooling unit from the ground, followed Atlee with his burden into the woods.

They moved forward as fast as it was possible with a vampire who was of no help when it came to walking. Aidan was helplessly more hanging than walking onto Atlee. After a while they reached the clearing with the grave and Josh let the cooling unit drop to the ground. He was gasping, bent forward, his hands leaning on his knees and fought for breath. His thigh started to hurt again. Running and climbing around weren´t the things recommended for a barely healed leg with a gunshot wound.

Atlee carefully let Aidan glide to the ground.

Josh stared at them both. Aidan´s face was torn with despair and...hunger. Call it thirst, Josh thought. Aidan moaned painfully.

He found back to his mind and bent down to where Atlee before had placed the cooling unit onto the ground. His fingers opened the lid more automatically than by conscious will and grabbed for a bundle of transfusion bags. He reached them down into the grave where Atlee opened the first bag and shoved the end of the tube into Aidan´s mouth.

"Eat! Eat, Aidan and you will recover…will become more strong and everything will become more easy."

Fangs tore apart the plastic and with sheer force Aidan chewed on the bag in his mouth sucking with a sound so inhuman it drove a cold shudder over Josh´s back.

The first gush of blood that shot into his throat nearly robbed him of his consciousness. He moaned under the sucking, his body tensed with expectation and Atlee supported him with an arm around his shoulder.

"Okay…let´s cut that damn ropes…!"

He took out a knife and set Aidan´s hands free from the ties, helped him to move them forward.

"Sssshhh…relax, Aidan…I´ll hold you…all okay…", Atlee whispered in his ear; "Eat!..." Then he lifted his head up to Josh who stood on the edge of the pit; "Josh…need the next one!", he ordered, his voice all calm. Atlee seemed kind of unimpressed by the fight that took place beside him. Maybe he was used to things like that. Things Josh had never seen before in such an intensity.

Tears streamed down Aidan´s cheeks when the blood revived his numb body, began to run into limbs that lacked of blood since days and weeks.

Plunged, pierced and burned with thousands of needles into his veins and muscles, setting his numb hands and feet on fire. The pain of it rose to an intensity that was nearly unbearable.

Aidan groaned with pain under the sucking, his body trembled and buckled.

With the second bag the spasms began…

Aidan spat blood and it was running down his chin and onto his chest, when the first spasms caught his whole body. He nearly screamed.

Josh couldn´t stood there any longer, looking down on his suffering friend without doing nothing.

Josh was afraid that Aidan was going into a kind of epileptic seizure.

Without thinking at his own personal safety in this situation the nurse/friend/human took over. He bent over Aidan, his legs spread to the right and left side into the ground and he grabbed the neck and shoulders of Aidan, supporting his head, those preventing him from beating his head onto the hard surface of the forest ground..

"We have to get him out of here!", he shouted at Atlee. "He´s in spasms! He´ll hurt himself in that damn seizures"

They placed his helplessly jerking body on the solid ground.

Saliva and blood ran down his cheek when Josh turned Aidan to the right side, his hand sliding under his head. The eyes were wide open. Bled black and he moaned deeply, his limbs trembling.

"Oh my God! My God…", Josh mumbled. "C´mon Aidan…gonna help you…I really don´t know why I´m going through all this cause of a vampire, Buddy…" He wasn´t sure if Aidan could hear him right now but he didn´t care for.

Josh hands moved upwards over the body, arranging his arms and legs so he would be lying more comfortable until the spasms subsided. Aidan´s face color wasn´t far better now but his breath came hard and fast. His teeth were clenched but not the way a human epileptic would do. His whole body trembled and he changed from moaning to suppressed screams when the pain came in waves.

"Hell! What´s going on with him? That isn´t werewolf blood! For sure not…He never reacted that way to normal human blood!" Josh sounded desperate.

"That´s not cause of the blood type…it´s general! His body had suffered from long time lack of blood and now the re-fill is a painful thing…", Atlee explained. "Don´t worry, Josh! He´ll be better soon…"

"You mean like when your hands and feet got constricted over a time and you have that freakin´ tingling when the blood runs through again…?"

"Yes…but Aidan got it worse now. His whole body is tingling, jerking all over, feels like on fire and cramping the same time…" Atlee nodded sadly.

"But…and…I mean…more blood would help?" Josh had no fuckin´ clue what would help fast. He was nurse for humans not vampires. He simply lacked of experience with them. All he knew now he had learned from practical handling; learning by doing. Legends won´t help much. There were no manuals for vampire treatment available.

They should have written instruction books…could be a real burner among them, he thought with a hint of a smile. If you´re not a willing donor run from them or stake them! That was all he knew from TV.

Black eyes fixed on his. Aidan stared at him with at least a bit of conscious control. Maybe he was kind of responsive now up to some certain degree.

"He buddy! You hearing me?" Josh stroked his temple with shaking fingers.

So nearby to a recovering vampire whose state was uncertain, don´t talk about control… He trusted his friend in general but wasn´t sure how far Aidan was able to recognize him as what he was: his human/werewolf friend. No opponent or enemy.

"It´s me! Josh! Your friend!", he tried to come through into his cognitive mind. For humans a lack of blood, and by that a lack of oxygen, over a period of more than two or less more minutes was disastrous to the brain functions..

"It´s ME! JOSH!"

Lips moved and under the trembling he heard a hint of a Yes. Weakly, nearly inaudible, but it was a Yes. So far, so well he thought.

Aidan clenched his teeth with the pain and the nearly unbearable tingling, plunging and burning that spread over and through his whole body. Faces were swimming, hovering above him and the voice that called for him sounded familiar. His whole body screamed for blood. And there was the strong scent that warned him. The scent he once got and ignored with the result he found himself on the ground, cramping and chucking up.

The smell of a werewolf.

But there was blood nearby.

His fingers scratched over the ground, tried to grab the bag but he had no control under the tingling. His hunger rose and he pressed out an animalistic groan of desperate disappointment. Damn. He was so hungry and he won´t be able to drink…

"He…he…help. Me!", he groaned, his shaking hands clawed for Josh when he tried to turn around. Hands caught him, supported him and a tube was shoved into his mouth.

"Calm down, Aidan…it´s okay! I´m gonna help you with it!"

He smelled fear. His friend gave off the strong scent of fear.

He was afraid of him!

Even when he tried to hide it by making his hands useful. It wasn´t to be mistaken. Not by a vampire.

Josh never fed a vampire that way before. He had given him transfusions when Bishop had tried to stake him, had been sitting beside him the whole time to protect him but never fed him blood from a bag like feeding a baby with a bottle…

When Aidan began to suck desperately by those making sounds like sucking through a straw to the bottom of a glass Josh closed his hands firmly around the bag, felt the vibrations of the sucking under his fingertips.

It felt strange and he wondered if it would be the same what a human felt when he fed a vampire…

After four bags, what meant two liters of blood…Heaven, what an amount!...Aidan´s trembling and tossing around subsided slowly, his breath became more calm and his limbs relaxed.

He gasped, his lips, his chin and his cheeks stained with the blood that he had spat out before. His fingers were wet and slippery with red liquid and he tried to fix his eyes onto Josh.

"JO…Josh…I…oh my…God…I…near…kille you!", he gasped, his voice low and weak, full of sorrow.

"Aidan! Don´t worry about! We´ll bring you home now…looks like you won´t, like Henry, be of much help…"

Aidan tensed, his hand grabbed for Josh´s arm , the fingers still trembling, more now with a hint of fear.

_Henry´s ruined face, sunken on his chest, tried to move upward. "I´m…so sorry, Aidan!", then he sank back into his stupor. Hands grabbed him from behind and they pulled him into the Council chamber… Mother was…_

Feelings, pictures were running through his mind. Memories. The last good-bye, then the cellar with that…

He swallowed hard a dry knot.

"He…Henry! What´s…about him? Is…", his voice trembled, nearly broke and tears were dripping from his eyes; "…is..is he dead?"

Fear was clearly written in his face.

"He´s alive! We got him! He´s in my car…" Josh tried to reassure him.

"What…what´s up with Henry?" His voice trembling with fear. Aidan tried to lift his head, searching for his son. His hand closed painfully around Josh´s wrist.

God! As if we don´t have problems enough…, he sighed inwardly, but what else should we have expected? Henry is his son. Quite sure he wants to know first of all…

Josh stroked Aidan´s temple with the free hand.

"He´s safe! Henry sleeps. He has lost a lot of blood and is seriously injured with this hole in his chest, but he´ll recover. I´ve hung him a transfusion… He will be better soon. Like you." Josh tried to smile what only worked half way under the pressure he felt in the moment.

Aidan definitely relaxed and breathed with relief.

For the first time since the sounds of the shovel had woken him up from his mental dullness and all over numbness he felt released.

He was free and Henry was safe under the surveillance of his friend.

They had come for them both…

His mind worked clearer now, more structured.

"Thank you, Josh!", he whispered-

Three words only but they meant so much for him.

A trustworthy friend was rare among humans. The more among werewolves. Who were mostly declared enemies to each other.

"Can you sit up? Wanna get you out of here…I don´t want a hang out with your companions, Aidan! Guess you aren´t in it too?!" Josh asked with some urgency.

The night was going forward and they had still spent way too much time here in the forest. First with setting Henry free and transporting him into his car which by now turned into a private emergency van.

Second the time they had needed to get Aidan out of his prison.

The faster they would leave here the better.

Before any damn not-Aidan´s-friend-vampire would appear on the scene to look for Mother´s precious living decorations.

Josh had access to blood. No problem to get more for Aidan and Henry if necessary…

But he really wanted to leave now. Before their problems would be increasing without limit. A pack of angry and vengeful vampires wasn´t a left hand game…

Aidan staggered, his legs shaking und most uncertain when Atlee and Josh helped him to stand up erect. He tried some careful steps, his feet still feeling numb like cotton batting. But the spasms were gone. With his arms spread over Atlee´s and Josh´s shoulders he managed it to walk slowly into the narrow path within the trees and bushes.

He was quite silent. His heavy breath hissed in Josh´s ears and the tips of branches and bushes hit them in the face and on the chest.

"Hope we won´t get problems with the way back. Atlee, I hope you can lad us back…guess that damn house isn´t fixed into the navy, so I´ll get trouble to find back without help…", Josh grumbled to the Dutch.

"No problem…I´ll get us back and safe the moment we´re sitting in your car…", he reassured him with a smile.

"That car, like you so eloquently post on, will be pretty damn crowded…Henry is sound asleep and Aidan isn´t much better with exception he isn´t unconscious…and spread over the whole fuckin´ back seat!" Josh grinned, turned to Aidan and warned him; "I beg you play nice, or I´ll put into the luggage trunk."

Aidan shot him a look, half helpless, the other half astonished.

"What…what´re you gonna do? Can´t…"

"Yes, we can!" Josh grinned and then he mumbled more to himself; " Don´t ask me how to get that stench out of my car within the next century…"

Both, Henry and Aidan gave off an abnormal smell emanating from their clothing, soaked with fresh and dried blood, sweat and things he really didn´t want to ask for wherefrom they came…

When they reached the wasted area of the night time parking lot he put the weight of Aidan over to Atlee, opened the front door and dived into his car. He looked over the seat back and controlled the transfusion which was still running. Henry´s skin was unnaturally hot and his breath came in hard and shallow gasps irrespective the morphine that nailed him to the ground.

"Ugh…think he´s really stoned! The better…we won´t get any complains about that damn shaking path way that´s gonna ruin my spine the more often we drive by… _I like_ the city with nice bright, spreading broad and soft as a baby butt surface lanes…!" he completed.

They put Aidan on the front seat beside Josh. He moaned and his right hand grabbed for the door side grip the moment Josh closed the door.

"I have to drive, Atlee…would be nice you put yourself on the back seat but I´m gonna need you as my navigator. For good you´re not suspended in a tank…"

"In a tank? What tank? Not the gasoline tank, I suppose…", Atlee protested.

"No! Guess you never read_ Dune_- The desert planet, didn´t you? There they have Navigators, real creepy types, suspended in a liquid tank…"

"I´m not _creepy_! I´m_ Dutch_!", Atlee protested.

"That´s it! Always the same with these Old Order guys!", Josh grinned right into the Dutch´s face. Guess he´s still gonna regret it he ever started with me…, he thought.

The Dutch climbed into the back space, pressing himself between the back seat that was all over occupied by a sleeping and non snoring Henry. He lifted his head so far he would be able to look on the road.

Josh watched closely over to the foot path they had left currently, then to the house that was laying silent in the darkness. Only to make sure they won´t be surprised by a pack of overly angry attackers. But all looked safe and wasted.

Josh started the engine, turned around and the car moved slowly into the raw path they had taken for their arrival. The darkness soon sucked them up like a black pit und wouldn´t it have been for the front lights, the ride had been a hellish one.

Rough-and-ready flattened ground, turns and bows, cattle fence wire and holes and bumps made the way back a real excitement for every car passenger. Good luck Henry was shut off. With his wound it would have been a real torture to be shaken through like on a sieve.

Josh had to concentrate on the narrow road, the suddenly appearing corners and the darkness to prevent them from ending up on one of these fence posts.

Atlee did hid best to lead from his position.

He felt the knees and the breath of Henry in his back and when they finally reached the normal road without any further damage to the car he himself breathed with relief.

"Now it´ll become better, Josh! I think you will find the way back now…?", he asked.

"You gonna leave?", Josh smiled broadly from the drivers seat, his right arm leaning on the seat back when he turned his face backwards on a stop.

"No! For sure not! I only meant…it´ll become easy now. No pun intended…"

"Ugh. So I ´m right… Okay…" Josh opened the door to the backseat and bent over a nearly comatose Henry. The bag was empty.

"Should give him an additional…", he mumbled. "You too…?", he addressed to Aidan in the front seat.

"What…" Aidan seemed to have fallen nearly asleep too and Josh wondered how exhausted he had to be to fall asleep on such a road…

"Blood! You should allow yourself a fifth unit before it´ll become moldy. Guess you´re having free capacities…" Josh smiled at him like a member of the Social Support, glad to help a poor homeless.

"let it cough up, Josh...", Aidan mumbled sleepily. He grabbed the bag that Josh reached him and crouched down in his seat again, going to suckle with satisfaction.

"Okay. Number One satisfied. Let´s go to number two…", he fumbled with the long slim tube that connected the transfusion bag with the needle in Henry´s clavicular vein, disconnected it and supplied him with a new blood bag.

"Henry!? You awake? Do you hear me…?" he carefully stroked his temple; "He´s still damn hot. Seems to have a fever…but that´s no wonder after that torture…"

A soft moan answered his ministrations and eyes opened to narrow slits, bled black with such an effort that seemed to need an eternity.

"Any pain? All okay, Henry…I´m reluctant with the stuff but if there´s need I´ll give you another shoot…"

The mumbled No was so low Josh shook his head. Totally stoned up to the cortex!

"No what? No pain or…no okay?"

Difficult to get a halfway usable answer from a man under morphine. Henry as a vampire didn´t make there any difference to human beings.

Lips moved slightly and Josh had to bent down to him to understand him.

"N..noo…pain…"

"Okay, Henry…We´ll drive home now and there you and Aidan can recover in safety…" Josh smiled and took the driver seat again.

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter 5_

The road was nearly empty now at this time of the night. Josh drove with medium speed, fully aware of the road and the traffic.

Not to make any mistake, not to go over the speed limit… For heaven´s sake no police! Highway patrol was the worst thing that could happen now. A close encounter with the law…

This mind shouted NO!

How would he be going to explain a car full of…don´t dare to think about…full of vampires. The backseat a crash cart, with a…person/being half comatose by a dosage of morphine. Opiates. The thing they really didn´t need to find in a man, pinned to the seat, covered in blood stained clothes with a hole in his chest as large as that from a hung up cow half… A blood transfusion and a cooling unit with the remains of a vampire feeding orgy of the very special kind.

Their mission had him reduced to the status of the driver of an emergency van with the most uncommon…call them monstrous…patients. Not to speak of the smell that filled the whole car. Men fully dressed, hung up and/or buried for at least two weeks didn´t give off the scent of violas.

Oh, he really could imagine what he would tell the cops: Yes, Officer! These are my friends! I got them free from a kidnapping! Oh, you must not worry! They are still alive! Undead to tell the truth, but well and living, except for the thing this one was buried alive and is somewhat dried out and cause of this he wants your blood. The other one was halfway slaughtered but they missed to kill him so he´s simply bled out and the hole in his chest doesn´t matter. When he has taken the other half of your blood he will be his old himself soon. For sad you will be dead then but my friends are very gentle killers….

A grin split his face and Atlee shot him an astonished look.

Josh gulped down a bursting laughter and tried to regain control. One hand on the steering wheel, the other one felt for Aidan who was very silent, crouched into his seat, the empty bag sunken into his lap. His eyes were closed.

"You sleeping the sleep of the just man, Aidan?" His hand went for the pulse point at his throat, remained there for a long moment and found the pulse more regular now that Aidan seemed to have got his fill.

Aidan twitched and his eyes tried to shoot open but what he managed was a slowly opening like his eyelids were made of lead.

Even in the dim light of the car Josh could see that Aidan´s face color had became better. Not that disturbing lifeless grayish but a pale color that went near to what he looked like when normal hungry.

"You´re feeling any better…?", Josh asked without taking his eyes from the road.

"Yeap! A bit…", he mumbled in respond. His voice weak and tired.

"Any more pain? Spasms? Tingling sensations? Burning feet?", Josh specified for him what came into his mind.

"What? Burn…what…?" Aidan knitted his brows.

"Forget it! Belongs to diabetics. You know!"

"I´m..whenever…in a lack of blood glucose…", Aidan mumbled. His hand went for the bag, clinging to the plastic foil and he lifted it against the dim light from outside. More than a slim film of former red liquid wasn´t inside yet.

Josh grabbed with the right hand for his wrist, forced Aidan´s hand down below a supposed line of visibility.

"What?!" Aidan protested.

"Sorry, Buddy but we are approaching urban Boston! I don´t wanna have anybody in another car seeing a blood bag dangling inside the windshield! Think for the traffic, Aidan!", he warned him with a more than serious voice.

"But Henry has…he has…"

"Henry is shot a transfusion! _Transfusion_! That looks quite freakin´ _normal_! And I´m a nurse! I´m allowed to do this! But you look like you´re fuckin´ _going to drink_ that stuff! Right out of the bag! That´s a difference!"

"So you better refill that next time into a tetra pack from milk or apple juice…", Aidan grunted.

"I don´t hope for…a next time! That once had been enough for me for the range of the next two hundred years. A time which for sure it needs to get that…_scent_…out of my car!" Josh gave off a sound between a grin and a grunt and he shot Aidan a look from the side.

"What scent?" Aidan asked, well aware that both of them; he and Henry, smelled like pulled out of a half rotten box.

"You sound and look very alive again!" he added.

"Thanks to your competence!", Aidan tried to smile a bit. He let out a deep breath, than forced himself to turn his head around to the backseat. To catch a more closely look onto his son.

Atlee smiled at him; "Nice to have you back in the tracks…"

Aidan nodded slightly. He listened with concentration over to Henry, searching for the rhythm of his heartbeat and breathing frequency.

What he saw filled him with sorrow.

Henry´s face was pale beyond the normal and when he stretched his arm to the backside, felt for his body, his hand touching the curve of the shoulder where the needle went into the clavicular vein, he felt the way to high temperature.

"Crap! He…he´s so…warm…my God! What´s up with him?", he asked. Henry felt warm like a mortal, a fact that didn´t fit into vampires.

He turned his face to Josh, his lower lip trembling when he begged: "Please, take…a stop! Josh"! Stop!"

"He! We are amidst traffic! Can´t simply stop out of nothing without getting mixed up in an accident possibly…" Josh protested.

"There´s a parking lot! Over there! Please, stop Josh!"

"You`ve drunken too much blood? Gonna chuck up in my car?"

Heaven. Aidan once had cramped and chucked up his blood right in the living room…!

"No!" Aidan pressed out, his look going back anxiously on Henry who was laying on the backseat.

Josh kept calm on the outside. Inside he felt mixed up like physical chaos. He pulled the car out of the traffic and into the parking lot of a closed restaurant.

His hands fell back in his lap when the car engine stopped.

"So, what´s going on, Aidan?", he asked, his voice calm and caring.

Aidan tried to open his seat belt, his fingers slightly trembling. Josh gave him a helping hand. Aidan opened the door, exited the car and slowly staggered around the luggage compartment to the left side, opened the door to the backseat. He crouched beside the seat, his hands went hectically for Henry´s forehead, his throat.

"What…? Henry!"

Aidan tried to push up the trouser leg of the jeans that Henry was wearing. Finally he managed it and his fingers moved over the skin of Henry´s lower leg. It was warm, not to call it hot like his forehead and his throat.

"He has a damn fever, Josh! Fever! Could you ever imagine?"

"Calm down, Aidan! Henry is a being of flesh and blood. He´s seriously hurt, lacks of blood and that damn hook…and I don´t want to think about what had been hung upon it before…has maybe transferred any kind of infection into his weakened body…"

"He can´t have any…infection! We´re vampires and vampires don´t get infections!", Aidan protested, his voice nearly hysterical.

"Don´t be mad, Aidan! With all respect, Aidan… I think he can catch an infection but normally his body wards it off way faster so you won´t find any signs of an defensive action. He has spent two weeks…not days…in a miserable condition near death hanging in that cellar! You yourself told me he will heal, but that takes time! He´s getting blood now and he´ll be better anytime… Don´t forget when you brought him in skinned! He had been in a far worse condition with exception that it longed only for one day, not two weeks!..."

"I´m so…so afraid of…of losing him!" Aidan pressed out.

Josh grabbed for his wrists, his warm fingers closing around and he felt how Aidan lent himself into the touch. "Okay…okay, Aidan…You won´t be losing him!", he whispered; " We´ll be home soon and then…"

"You…you would allow him in?", Aidan asked, his voice trembling. His eyes looked into Josh´s face.

"I´ve invited him in that afternoon! Forgot? It´s okay, Aidan. Don´t worry for that. I´ll drive us home and we´ll take Henry in with us. Put him in the room upstairs and you and I´ll care for him to get him healthy again…"

"You…you have to work, Josh!" Aidan looked at him skeptical.

"Not for the moment."

"They…they kicked you out of hospital?" His voice full of sorrow, his thoughts racing. He didn´t have the faintest idea what he had maybe missed within those weeks. Things went so fast over the last time.

"No! I´m called in sick! Got shot!"

"You what?"

"Guess you really missed a part, Aidan! I had a little dispute with Ray and Nora in the woods. Guns were involved and so I and Ray ended up in hospital. I caught a bullet in my thigh.", Josh indicated his merely healed leg. "I´m suspended from shift for two further weeks so I´ve time enough at home.

"Your leg…it´s gonna be okay?", Aidan asked him and his hand moved over the thigh.

"It´s okay, Aidan. No additional reason for being worried. But the doctors said that I should not work for additionally two weeks cause I´ve a damn running job! I barely can care for patients out of a wheelchair or with a pair of crutches at hand…" he smiled.

"You should save yourself a bit, Josh…" Aidan´s voice sounded sorrowful and he looked over his friend.

"Yeap! But looks like that´s something that had gone out of hand for me in the moment. You didn´t ask for me saving-myself when you decided to maneuver yourself and your son right into cow shit!"

"That looks to be true. I´m so sad, Josh…" Aidan confirmed with a sad expression in his face.

"But what did Atlee say? You have to walk forward if you don´t want to stay stuck in the cow poo!" Josh added; "Let´s drive home. The faster we are getting there the faster we can put him in bed. And both of you definitely need a shower…"

Aidan bent back from the seat and Josh helped him rising up and back into his seat. The traffic wasn´t that thick and it took them some twenty minutes until Josh turned into the narrow backyard. Aidan slowly left the car, his hands clinging to the edge of the door for support. Josh shot him an anxious look.

"You okay?"

"I have to…" Aidan didn´t sound all too convinced but he was ashamed of having produced real problems for Josh. And so it wasn´t for him to produce more. Keep yourself together, he warned himself. His face tensed when he watched Josh and Atlee getting an unsupportive Henry out of the car. They put his arms over their shoulders and Josh threw the keys over to Aidan. He caught them more by luck as by ability, the movement sending the world around him into a whirling spiral staircase. He fought for breath and control and staggered to the stairs of their home. His hand on the railing he climbed up the stairs like a ninety year old. Crap! These weeks in a narrow coffin had robbed him of more energy than he had estimated. He fumbled for the keyhole and finally managed to open the door without so much of a very alert Josh being aware of his real weakness. When he turned slightly to let them in he was surprised how close Josh and Atlee had been behind him with their load.

His eyebrows knitted when he saw Atlee crossing the threshold, his right foot inside…

"Uhm! Josh! What´s about him?" he directed to Atlee, stepping right into his path. He wasn´t sure but he didn´t want the Dutch go crispy with Henry at his shoulder while pushing him into the house.

Atlee suddenly hesitated, stopping dead in his tracks.

"Uhm! Him! Oh that´s kind of okay, Aidan! He´s no uninvited! " Josh explained with a shrug of his free shoulder.

"But you rather…I mean…you told me you…We..Don´t do that…",Aidan stammered, his hand laying on the chest of Atlee. No force but definitely.

"Sorry, Aidan! Circumstances forced me to make agreements beyond my rules… I´m sorry. "

"So you invited him in?!" Aidan looked at Josh. Surprise was written into his pale face.

"Kind of…" Josh mumbled, relocating the load of an nearly unconscious vampire onto his shoulder. I wonder why a vampire with a strict diet of liquid proteins is that kind heavy, especially him who isn´t the tallest one of them…, he thought for a moment.

"Kind of? What exactly does that mean? Was he compelling you, Josh?" his tone became more firm. Had Atlee tricked Josh into inviting him?

"What what kind of? Aidan! What do you think of me? I had been in the hospital with my leg nailed to that bed of mine and he came in for a visit of his own purposes. We talked and worked out a plan to get both of you free. He left, but came back soon, asking for the morphine Henry had told him something about in his feverish daze feeling… He was in pain and Atlee asked me to get it so he could provide Henry with it to soften his agony…"

Aidan remembered that he had left the box with the analgetic in the bedroom, on the nightstand.

"I had put it on the bedside table, that´s right. But how…? You have been in hospital…"

"We… I gave him the keys out of pity! Together with a written permission to enter the house… In the hope it would work like magic. To give him access without him going crispy! I know I was risking a lot! More than under normal circumstances I would have been willing to! I did it for you! Only for you! Because I don´t want you to lose your beloved Henry!"

"I…I don´t know what to say…" Aidan stammered.

"Yeah! I think so! I was willing to go to lengths I would never have done before! Because I´m calling you my friend! I trust you and you trust Henry! I hoped that I wouldn´t have to pay for this any day by being betrayed by him!" Josh directed to Henry. "After all what had happened I was rather uncertain but I told myself: Okay you can´t always be that suspicious of a man your best friend would trust with his life to! And Henry had proved himself a man…a vampire who has himself under control. And you love him, I see. So we did…" Josh took a deep breath after he finished his declaration of their relationship. His eyes closed and the tension in his body released irrespective the fact he was supporting his half of Henry.

"Okay. Okay" It took Aidan a few seconds to understand than he stepped back to let Atlee in.

Atlee smiled slightly and together they pushed Henry upstairs. That looked strange. Atlee took Henry´s weight, pushing from behind and Henry was hanging like a bag of corn between them. The morphine shading his mind and reducing his ability of perception of the surroundings and the fact he was to climb up stairs to a minimum. It was more a pushing and pulling than walking. Aidan opened the door to the room he had given to Henry before. The curtains were closed, the bed covered with used sheets, the pillows wadded like Henry had left the room. His scent was still lingering in the air. Aidan threw them aside, exchanging the bedding against a new one with vampire speed. The moment he finished, Atlee and Josh pushed Henry into the room and placed him on the ground.

"Okay. Let´s undress him as long as he´s still shut off…!" Josh proposed, with his hands going for the jacket. He opened it but what was remaining of it. The dark jeans tissue soaked with more or less dried blood, some so old it was of dark brown color. Josh had seen this before in the cellar when he tried to stop the bleeding after unhooking him. But now, in the bright light from the lamp under the ceiling he became fully aware of the real extent of the damage.

"Shit! That looks far worse than expected. Guess I had a clue…but this…oh man!" He turned his face to Aidan; "Just…I can´t do this in here! Not on the ground…That´s no simple treatment. Normally he would be a case for Surgery!"

"We can´t bring him to a doctor or into the hospital! Josh, you´re the one what comes closest to a doctor!" Aidan answered after a close watch on Henry´s chest; "No wonder he´s in a damn fever…"

"I need a table in here at least! Not that small side table…" Josh directed to the chair.

"I´ll get you the kitchen table up here! Not making any sense to carry him down- and upstairs again…" Aidan suggested and waved Atlee to follow him. They sped down the stairs and after a few moments Josh heard them coming upstairs again.

"I wonder where Sally is…Looks like she has taken a vacation…Maybe she isn´t fond of in-home-surgery…", Aidan joked while they maneuvered the table inside what for they had to turn the table onto one large side, the legs going sidewise. "Where?", he asked Josh.

"Middle. Under the lamp. I need as much light as possible."

Josh had gone through basic education for surgery when he had been at the medical school before he left everything behind after being bitten by the werewolf who turned him. The werewolf he had a shootout with.

They placed the table on the position Josh ordered. The friend looked concerned when he watched over to Henry who was lying on the rug. Josh looked into Aidan´s black eyes, the face with the dropped down fangs. He asked himself if Aidan would be able to stand the following time. There would be a lot of blood and his blood was still poisoned with that damn garlic, despite the fact that he had drunken a lot. But Josh didn´t know how strong the garlic would be still working... No time now to make pots of tea with that feverfew herb to inverse the garlic effect. They would do that afterwards, when he had finished with Henry. The moans that came up from the rug emphasized it that it was Aidan´s beloved son who needed help first.

He bent nearer to Aidan, caught a hint of a scent. That fuckin´ garlic was in his breath too. Like on human beings. He sniffed at it with disgust. Josh had never been all too font of large amounts of garlic, but now it became a special dimension. Carefully he started:

"Guess...you...you can manage that? There will be a lot of blood around and it smells like you´re still suffering from the garlic poisoning...See that in your eyes and from the fangs. Sorry, Aidan...if you want to leave now, I won´t be angry with you..."

"Thanks for your pity but I´m old enough to control this. At least for a while..." Aidan answered angrily.

"Guess...so long until I do the first incision and the blood starts running from his chest...", Josh directed to Henry. He had strong doubts about it. Atlee had warned him how strong the poison was on vampires...

"I can manage it, Josh! Adesso. Basta!"

Josh heard the growling behind Aidan´s voice and he ascribed it to his momentary medical state, not his mood. He sighed and decided to concentrate on his...repeating-patient. The first time he hadn´t threatened Henry to be correct. It had been Aidan.

I should get used to it that out of my nurse habits my home has finally become a vampire-hospital, he thought and sighed with resignation.

"You know where Sally is…?" Aidan asked him casually. Not expecting any answer. Sally often disappeared for the hospital since one day she managed it to leave home out of free will. So he wasn´t concerned about her absence.

"We´ll have to talk!" Josh answered, his face stern. Aidan related it to the upcoming improvised surgery, not related to Sally.

"For sure I´m going to help you…", Aidan reassured him. In hospital he also worked shift in the Emergency room. Sometimes a hard job to do when it came to real bloody cases and he was…still hungry. He remembered more than often that he had left the ER in a hurry, stripping down his bloody protection dress after finishing with the patient. Before his vampire nature, led by hunger, would break through.

"We´ll have to talk about Sally!" Josh closed. His face a mask of concern and suddenly Aidan smelled fear on him.

Take this as a warning that something is really wrong, he thought.

"What´s up with Sally?" he insisted.

"Not now!" Josh growled.

Okay, okay, maybe he´ll concentrate on Henry!

For a moment Aidan stared at the table. He gulped and felt a knot rising when the memories of that makeshift torture chamber at Halloway´s washed over him like a dark flood. This large table made of precious wood, covered with plastic foils like the rug beneath. I should have been damn suspicious when I first entered the conference room with Henry for an all alone Suren!

"Will we undress him on the ground or…?" Aidan asked carefully to change the theme from Sally to Henry. Mostly to distract himself from his memories.

"Let´s get him on the table!" Josh nodded over there. The knot became acid when they placed Henry on the table. He groaned and Aidan bent over him. Atlee slipped aside and took the chair at the wall, waiting for what was to come. He wasn´t certain if he should leave now or better be waiting to talk about their further plans after the wolf and the vampire would have finished with Henry.

Bled black eyes opened under fluttering lids, his eyesight heavy with the morphine and Aidan asked himself immediately if the analgetic would be enough to keep him free of pain, would Josh be going to suture the wound… He stroked Henry´s temple with one hand then he bent over to Josh, whispering in his ear;

"Do you still have morphine? Only in case we´ll need it? I don´t wanna have him going through any of the slightest pain now when we have got him out of that hell of a cellar…"

"There´s stuff! Don´t worry. I…uhm I don´t like to say it…but a close friend of me, a doctor, owed me something and I could convince him to prescribe another box under a pretense…", Josh whispered and his cheeks reddened a bit. He had felt uncomfortable with it and this added to his definite feeling of having gone to lengths only because Aidan was his friend.

Josh decided not to think about any further. He bent over Henry, pulled back the remains of the jeans jacket only to reveal a shirt below that was hardened with more dried blood then one would call healthy to lose.

"Oh my God! Dear God! Who the hell had done this? I´m gonna kill him after I would have pulled out his guts one by one and gonna strangle him with them!" he cursed. "Need a damn knife! Aidan, get me a knife!" he demanded.

Aidan stiffened unintentionally for a moment. Knife! That damn Viking hunting knife. Suren´s eyes glistening with eager expectation… Glad she´s dust now, he thought.

"Aidan?!" He heard Josh´s voice impatiently like from afar, won back his controls and nodded; "Where do you have…?"

"In my closet! I have a set of surgery instruments from my former education…Please get it for me…"

Aidan nodded and left the room only to be back within a few moments, supplied with alcohol, the instruments and a box of single use gloves. He wondered what Josh had at hand in his home. But what do I care for? We are nurses!

Josh took out a knife, let out a deep breath and bent over Henry´s face, fixing his wavering view.

"Any pain, Henry? Tell me! You won´t have to go through it by any means…" he waited for an answer, hoping he would at least be able to react so far as to utter his needs. "Listen! Do…you…hear…me, Henry?"

Calm yourself, he commanded to himself. Give him time. He´s stoned up to the cortex in the best case. He will be everything but fast in reaction…

Henry moaned, his lips trembling and a tear appeared in the corner of his eye.

"Wha…what…gon…na do?" Josh could hear the fear behind his stammering. Understandable after what he had been suffering from. "Ca…can´t an…more…"

"I know. It´s all okay, Henry…all okay. We won´t do you any harm. Do you understand?"

"Y…yes…" his voice nearly inaudible. Trembling.

"Okay, so far, so well. Listen…we´re going to clean the wound and I´ll try to close it afterwards so far that it will heal better with the transfusions…", he tried to smile reassuring, not sure if Henry got it the way it was meant by him. Then, bent over to Aidan; "It has been a long time ago since I´ve seen such a freakin´ hole in ones chest!"

"You hadn´t been in war…"

"I´m glad to say so. In your time it must have been hell! Am I right? All that halfway medieval weapons. Fight man against man… For good luck I hadn´t been in the Army!"

"Alternative civilian service?" Aidan asked.

Josh nodded. "I did mine in a house full of handicapped children."

"That´s quite good and acceptable. For children: always a good choice." A slight smile hushed over the face of the older vampire.

Children were to be protected under all circumstances. Untouchable to everyone. They deserved protection and guidance.

"Henry!... Henry? All okay? Can we start…or do you need further morphine at first?" Only to make sure it would be safe.

"You…cut?" His voice was trembling, fading away. His eyes told everything and Josh felt so sorry for him. Henry had gone through cruelness within short time a man won´t have to suffer from over his whole life time. And a vampire had a way longer life span.

"Yes. I´ll have to do, probably…that wound of yours is in a very bad condition…but we´ll get that right! There´s morphine and I promise you that you won´t suffer from any further pain…Trust me, please. I´ll only help you! No harm, Henry!"

Henry stared at him, his view fixed onto Josh´s eyes. Not out of compulsion but by fear and weakness. His fingers moved, tried to grab for Josh´s hand. He let it happen. Finally he pressed out an all over weakly Yes.

"Okay. Try to relax, Henry…Aidan gim´me a helping hand…" Josh´s voice was calm. What he was going to do was what he had done in the hospital over all the years and it distracted him from his thoughts about the events of the night. What he had seen and what had been to be done. He was a professional in all medical stuff. Like Aidan whom he owed his job at Boston Suffolk County Hospital.

Josh peeled back the jacket and Aidan carefully lifted Henry´s upper part of the body by supporting him under the back. He was alert not to touch the wound´s opening in his back. Henry hissed through clenched teeth, his face torn. Aidan felt his muscles tense.

"Crap! That won´t do! I have to get down to his skin!" Josh grunted and reached for the box with the MST. He filled a syringe and peeled back the shirt at his shoulder, going for the clavicular vein. With a swift hand he inserted the needle into the vein, shot him a first dosage. The third in this night. But what for, he thought. The worst that could happen was a repeatedly unconscious Henry…

"Okay, Henry! I got it…No problem…all will be okay…" The answer was a groan which subsided into relief. The fingers around his wrist relaxed, opened and the hand sunk back on the table.

"He must be really afraid of lying on a table…" Josh whispered into Aidan´s ear when he went under the shirt with the scalpel.

Henry twitched, his eyelids shot open and his hand tried to rise to stop Josh.

"Uh hu…relax, Henry! Relax…" Nonetheless Henry groaned with fear and he moved slightly, his limbs heavy with morphine. He hadn´t any control but the fear was rising within him like a spreading fire that was going to consume his flesh.

He buckled under Josh´s hands, his head moving upwards, his dark eyes wide with fear.

Josh let the scalpel go and it landed on the table.

"Keep him down, Aidan! I can´t cut that damn shirt down when he´s moving around. For heaven´s sake, Henry! Stay quiet, hold on!" Josh demanded, his voice desperate.

Josh and Aidan grabbed Henry´s arms and legs. Aidan didn´t want to force him down with his pure physical strength. But his son seemed to be at the edge of panic.

"Henry! HENRY! Stop!" he commanded with his voice all vampire, not sure if it would work on him. Henry groaned and his eyes fixed on Aidan, his face, the black eyes and the fangs.

"You will lie still now! Nobody is going to hurt you! Close your eyes and relax. Don´t look for what Josh is doing! He´s the good doctor in here!" his hand stroking the hot temples. The eyes fixed on him and the tension in the face subsided, signs of basic fear giving space to those of great exhaustion.

"I can´t dare to work when he´s moving around like mad! I understand him all too well, his fear, his instincts but he has to lie quiet. Otherwise I´m risking to hurt him!" Josh wiped his forehead with the back of his lower arm, breathed deep and looked into Henry´s face.

"Okay, Buddy! Relax! All okay now, hm? I _won´t hurt you_! Get it?" he mumbled with soft voice.

Lips moved weakly. Henry felt terribly tired. The morphine was taking its toll. The oval face that was hovering above him smiled, a hand in gloves cupped his chin and the thumb stroked over his cheek. He heard words of comfort, the voice low and insistent but the timbre soft like to calm down an all over afraid pet. Henry let his eyelids drop and his eyes closed. He breathed with relief.

He felt hands moving over his now totally weak and more and more growing numb body. The pain subsided and he felt the shirt falling apart from him when tissue tore under a sharp blade. He fought down the urge to move. This sound so equal to that when Suren had stripped down his clothing with brutal force to get access to his…his skin.

That voice stayed with him and he clung to it like a drowning man to a straw. Josh´s voice that told him to relax and please not to be afraid anymore… He felt when they lifted his upper part of his body slightly and fabric slipped off under him. His bare back touched a cool surface but it didn´t hurt unexpectedly.

Stay calm…stay calm… The voice a reassurance in the numbness of his fogged mind. His fingers tried to grab anything when he felt like he was falling. There was cold material at his bare back and cool hands at his chest.

"Thank God he is calm now…" Josh mumbled when he very carefully started to abscise dried blood and fragments of torn skin and flesh from the edges of the front wound. He couldn´t differ if the wound in the chest or in the back was worse. Both were deep and torn channels where the hook had been pushed through from back to front-side before it protruded from the chest.

Like the entrance and the exit wounds laid the hook had gone through the right lung, barely missing the spine and by that the heart. Josh felt nausea rising when he saw the whole extent of this torture that would have killed a human being within short time.

"How can even a vampire be that gruesome…? I´m ever shocked when I see to what a human mind, led by so called intelligence, is capable…" Josh cursed while he tried to clean up the edges in an attempt to get linear lines which would enable him to stitch the wounds. When he finished with the front-side Aidan helped him to turn Henry over onto his belly. In between Josh turned his head, looking on the watch on the nightstand.

It was 4 a.m.

More than one and a half hour since they had brought Henry into his room.

"That´s gonna be a very long night tonight…", Josh said in a low voice. Approximately they would need another hour to finish with the back wound.

Aidan nodded.

Atlee was sitting in the chair under the window. He couldn´t help much because the narrow space around the makeshift surgery table was crowded. This small room was clearly not intended for such actions. So he sat in the chair, watching over them both, his hearing listening to the door to make sure they would be safe in here. His sensitive vampire hearing reached out to the stairs, the main door and the street.

No threat approaching.

"Outside all is okay…" he shortly whispered to Aidan when he turned his face to him. Aidan nodded and relaxed a bit.

Henry didn´t move anymore and finally Josh covered the wounds with large sized bandaging pads for what they had to turn Henry over again.

"Okay, that will do for the first. Time to clean him up and put him over into his bed. Henry is sound asleep…" Josh said with a gasp. He felt for the pulse, found it fast but regular, the skin much too warm. But they would handle that the moment they would have him in his bed.

"You can make yourself useful." Aidan addressed to Atlee; "Please get us a bowl of water, towels and a wash cloth… Kitchen tissues are down in the kitchen, the other things you will find in the bathroom right side ahead..." Better to clean him up on the table which was still stained with the remains of improvised vampire surgery than on the fresh bed covers, he thought.

Atlee rose from his chair, glad to do something of use instead of sitting here since two and a half hour.

Atlee went downstairs into the kitchen. He searched through the boards until he found a whole kitchen roll. The kitchen was of older age, clean and simple, kept clean by its mortal owner. The way he knew it from his own people. The simpleness flattered him and he felt somewhat comfortable with it on a strange kind.

The bathroom on the first floor was large sized. The tub was standing at the wall, the faucets made of chrome, highly polished. All looked clean in here. He bent down and grabbed a bowl from under the washing stand, filled it with water and grabbed towels and wash clothes from the shelf beside.

In the bedroom he shot Josh a questioning look, uncertain where to place the things.

"Thanks, get it over here please. On the table…" Josh smiled a bit with relief. He was glad he finished the debridements without further problems. He touched Henry´s temple and forehead with bare hands feeling how warm they were. His hand opened the belt and the jeans, undressing the legs and moved down between the legs, testing the skin temperature of the upper thigh.

He shook his head no.

"Not any better. Okay. Let´s clean him up and when we´ll have bedded him I´ll start with physical fever reducing techniques on him. I don´t know if this works on vampires but related to his body`s reaction, I suppose a Yes!"

Henry´s eyes were still closed, his breath came with regular but fast gasps and Josh and Aidan undressed him completely until he was lying on the table nakedly.

With professionalism Josh began to clean up his face. The bruises were dark violet and yellow and stood out from the grayish pale skin like dots of some strange color. Abrasions where fists had hit the face with brutal force, all not healed because of the lack of blood and the massive volume loss.

"He must have got roughed up before they hung him from that hook… I wonder how they overwhelmed him…He´s equal to them in strength and speed…" Josh mumbled when his hands moved down to Henry´s throat.

"Just against three or more of them even Henry had no chance when they got him by surprise. What I suppose. Even I had no chance against a pack of vampires…" Aidan confessed with a sad smile. And he remembered how they pulled him in front of Mother, on his knees , his face bleeding from their fists.

It had been so humiliating.

Mother had enjoyed it with cold satisfaction.

A deep growl rose in his throat, so loud that Josh lifted his head and looked at him, surprised what was going on now.

Aidan shook his head no.

"Nothing about you or him…", he directed at Henry; "Just bad memories…"

"Okay!? You wanna tell later…?"

"No. Thanks but I´m sated for the moment with stuff like that…!" he denied.

He felt tired and exhaustion grabbed for him by now despite the fact he had got a lot of blood. But two weeks of extreme starvation and being locked in a coffin wouldn´t disappear like a simple scratch. How worse would Henry be feeling now?

Aidan gasped once than he washed down Henry´s legs, the taut muscles. His hand grabbed the left ankle to lift the foot. He hesitated, watched more closely and half turned the ankle around, inspecting the skin. Then he did with the right ankle.

There was no doubt!

Similar in size and shape there were abrasions that went deep into the skin. Carefully he searched for traces at Henry´s wrists.

Equal shit!

"Damn fucking bastards!" he cursed.

Josh, who was preparing another blood transfusion, handling with the bag and the tube, looked at him. The question was written into his face what Aidan had found to send him into cursing.

"That freakin´ fucking bloody bastards of a goddamn vampire pack! Don´t ask me for what I´ll do to them the very moment I`ll get them into my hands…!"

"He, Aidan! What´s going on..?" Josh asked and came to him. There had to be a reason for Aidan to be in such a raging mood. And Josh doubted that it had anything to do with the still lingering smell of garlic on him.

"Look!" Aidan simply said and directed to the ankles and wrists.

Josh looked at the skin.

"Ghee, that looks like from manacles…as far as I´m going into forensic direction…"

Aidan searched the belly for further traces.

"Help me turning him around, Josh!", he begged and together they turned Henry over again. Aidan´s fingers went down the back and he hissed. Bruises and abrasions which he first had taken for the traces of beating. But now they developed as to be resulting from dragging Henry over raw ground outside. Stones, split, branches…

They had caught him outside, on the run, and had tied him with iron manacles around hands and feet, pulling him up and dragging him through the woods with his back downwards.

"Bastards! They dragged him in before hanging him from that damn hook! Tied up with iron manacles like dead game!" He was cursing and his face fell, his fangs falling, the eyes went bled black and he looked very terrifying. Wouldn´t it have been for Josh who was used to the sight of a vamped out and enraged Aidan, anybody else would have fled the room with high speed.

His face a mask of wrath.

"I see, I see, Aidan! But please…calm down…calm yourself…I´m providing him with an additional blood transfusion…not the last one he´ll get…Henry will heal, that I´m caring for. And he´s under morphine and he feels no pain currently…Don´t worry, Aidan! Please! The most important thing is we have got him and you out of there. Anything else will become right with time!" Josh closed his gloved hands around Aidan´s wrist, pulled him closer and looked right into his eyes.

Not the right moment to confront him with the fact that the next problem was dangling right behind them. This problem was screaming for help!

Sally!

Aidan had missed her when they entered the house but by now he didn´t know the reason.

He needed a few moments to come down from his anger and to be able to concentrate on the nearby problems. He breathed deep and resonant, finally he looked down, his view more calm now and going to Henry again.

"Are you ready with cleaning him, Aidan?" Josh spoke with a soft voice to make sure Aidan would react to him again, giving him some time for an answer.

Let him come down, he thought.

He felt the same anger but it wouldn´t help Henry when he was losing control.

"We´ll put him into the bed. He´ll get more blood and I´ll care for him as good as possible. He´s no human but in the moment his body seems to run on the human track when it comes to sickness… I´m astonished to learn but…what do I care for?"

Aidan nodded thoughtful. He finished the cleaning and carefully they laid Henry in the freshly made bed. Josh´s eyes searched for a place to fix the transfusion set on but on the wall was no picture fixing or anything he could use for an makeshift infusion post.

"Hm…no one wants to stand beside the bed, holding up that bag until it´s empty…", he grunted.

"There´s a lamp downstairs. That from the living room…"

"Good idea!" Josh´s face showed a grin, "I should rather put him into hospital…He´s a real severe case…!"

"You don´t mean this honestly. Josh? Don´t you?"

"But of cause!" He hit Aidan in the rib cage, laughed and with the vampire´s view feeling on his back like a hand he went downstairs for the lamp post.

_What the heck...what´s up with Sally? _

For a moment he stopped dead in his tracks. Despite the night time it was utterly silent in the living room. No sound came from anywhere even not from outside the house. In his mind he saw Sally sitting on the large couch, her beautiful young face with the dark brown curls and her soft brown eyes. The image was so intense he stepped forward, his lips unintentionally forming a word.

"Sally?"

He reached the couch, stopped and bit his lower lip.

This was foolish!

Sally wasn´t here.

Not since that night he had the shootout with Ray and Nora.

She had disappeared…

…into Limbo.

How anywhere between heaven and hell could anybody be so crazy to shred herself? Not to get rid of the Reaper or because there was no door coming again. All no reasons. Sally had been safe in the house and they had ward off the Reaper with Zoe´s help.

They would be ready to fight again for her if necessary.

Sally didn´t deserve such a fatal fate.

Josh felt tears rising and his throat became dry and salty and he needed all his strength to keep himself together now. The first thing they had to do was to get Aidan´s son up and well again. Maybe he would be about to help them when it came to search for her and get her back in the row.

He, Josh, could put some force onto Henry to help them; when he would insist that Henry owed him and Aidan something: his life and freedom.

But time would show what the vampire would be worth. Josh felt uncertain about Henry. It wasn´t mistrust and Aidan had mentioned that Henry had become a man one could be proud of. But if…if Henry would be reluctant to help them it was quite understandable. Aidan´s glorious plan to get rid of Mother had fatally failed and nearly both cost their life. Especially Henry had gone through more trouble, turmoil and pain than anybody else of them.

So his tendency to endanger himself again by any means was tending against zero. Josh would be equally reluctant he had to confess himself.

"Where are you with the lamp post? Went sound asleep on the couch down there?", he heard a voice, impatiently and with a hint of cynicism.

"It´s up soon!", Josh shouted and grabbed the lamp beneath the empty couch. The plug connected it to the wall and he bent down and tore the plug out of the socket.

Hastily he walked to the stairs. It was dark in the living room and suddenly the lamp in his hand started to flicker. The bulb went on and off.

"I have torn out the plug!", Josh cursed and pulled at the wire with force. The cable sprang forward to his feet, the plug free and disconnected.

He stared at the bulb.

"Don´t drive me mad! You´re simple electric supply!"

The bulb became bright and the light spread around the room. Then it shut off again. Only to flash up again. Off. On. Off. On.

Josh let go the lamp post that suddenly seemed to tingle in his hand. He shook his hand like to get rid of ants. The lamp fell onto the rug and flashed up again. The light became brighter than anytime before until the whole living room was filled with glistening white cold light. His eyes began to tear.

"What the hell?!", he shouted and fear filled his heart.

That was quite freakin´ fuckin´ impossible!

"AIDAN!", he shouted with panic.

He heard fast steps and Aidan came speeding down the stairs.

"WHAT?" He stopped abruptly, watching at the unreal lightshow with disbelief. "What the hell is going on here?" He shaded his vampire eyes from the glare. "JOSH? What did you do? What`s that?"

"I did NOTHING!", Josh screamed. He crouched behind the couch, the bright glare flooding the whole room, spreading over the furniture and it seemed to go right through the walls that where covered with thick layers of wallpaper. They looked kind of lucent despite the fact that they were made of massive brick stones.

Suddenly the glare shut off.

The darkness was so thick and all of a sudden that Josh shrieked with shock.

Aidan stood there, amidst the room and stared at him and the surroundings with disbelief.

"What for all heavens had THIS BEEN?", he stated.

All had happened so fast he wasn´t to reach for the chimney and for the iron poker he once had used in defense against Sally.

The darkness was thick and suddenly a shrieking sound came from the side board where the radio was standing.

Like one was running through the frequencies under full power of sound.

Josh and Aidan covered their ears with the hands.

The sounds were painful.

**Into the Limbo**

The indicator for the radio frequencies ran upwards over the scale reading with incredible speed by those producing shrieking sounds. A mixture of overrun channels and parts with no channel.

"WHAT´s that?", Aidan shouted over the ear bursting noises.

"Don´t know!" Josh whimpered, his hands pressed on his ears. He crouched behind the couch in the hope that the material would cover the noises a bit but what showed to be useless.

Aidan jumped for the radio in an attempt to switch it off. He landed on his knees under the sideboard, his arm shot upwards and fumbled for the switch hectically. The noises started do hurt really and for a mere second he looked at the indicator that suddenly stopped.

The noises stopped.

His hand hovering over the switch. Hesitating.

Only to be replaced by what seemed to be a…

…Voice.

Josh´s and Aidan´s eyes widened when a sound that seemed to be voice out of an oversized empty and hall wide space reached their hearing. They both concentrated to differ words or so far a message behind them. None of them dared to speak.

The words came snatchy, nearly inaudible because of the interferences, than again they sounded desperate and as if brought out under some incredible torture.

Josh`s blood seemed to freeze. And he wasn´t the only one in the room.

On top of the stairs Atlee appeared lured outside by the disturbing noise that filled the whole house. He looked more than astonished.

"The voice from hell…", Atlee whispered.

More he didn´t dare to say. He simply tried to listen when the crescendo lowed down to a level that made it at least possible to listen.

"Ga…ga…ga…get!...Me…Ou…ou…outa…heere…! A staccato of words, torn, pressed, dilated and repeatedly formed as if to make them audible to anybody listening to…

Her.

"That´s Sally!", Josh whispered. His voice all panic.

"He…hell…help! A…I…HEEELLLPPP!"

Josh crawled to the radio on his knees, his hands grabbed the radio and he brought his mouth near to the display.

"Sally? SALLY! We. Are. Here! Do YOU HEAR US…?" He sounded desperate. The words came like shots and he didn´t shrink back despite her voice was horrifying. A voice that yelled for help and his heartbeats were speeding up and he felt it pumping in his chest like a machine in overdrive.

Aidan could hear the heart of his friend as well.

He cupped Josh´s shoulders, pulled him in an embrace, turning him away from the radio and his hands covered Josh´s temples.

"Get away from it, Josh! Or she will pull you with her! You can´t help her now! We´ll have to…"

"Don´t tell me what I have to do!, Josh barked, his teeth bared like he wanted to threaten him. Threatening a vampire!

That was ridiculous!

But he felt enraged now that Aidan tried to keep him back from saving Sally. He was numb to all attempts of Aidan to bring him back to terms.

"Do don´t care a bit for her! You never felt anything!", he attacked him, those beating him to the fundaments of his soul.

That really hurt!

And Josh wanted to hurt…now that the man he called his friend was leaving him all alone.

Josh tried to fight him of but even a vampire restored from long starvation was much stronger than him. With no effort Aidan pulled him away from the radio.

The radio from which Sally´s voice now came dark and tempting like that of a siren or harpy. Luring Josh to come to her. A voice so dark he never heard her before. Only equal to her voice when the Reaper had taken her over with dark force, her helpless body spread out at the base of the stairs.

"Come! Come to me…" The voice luring , sweet, full of expectation; "Come…with…me! Follow. ME!" The voice was sucking him in with an surreal force, pulling at his heart like at the wires of a puppet.

Other than his mortal friend Aidan was resistant to the paranormal pull.

"LET. ME. GO!", Josh shouted at him. Full of wrath.

"THAT´S NOT HER, JOSH! The Forces of hell have her and you hear a monster! A MONSTER; JOSH! Not Sally!...", Aidan tried again, his grip fierce like bands of steel.

He wouldn´t let go the friend.

Tears streamed from Josh´s eyes, he gasped desperately and his arms and legs slowly became tired from the fight against Aidan´s strength.

Finally he gave in.

When Aidan had pulled him away from the radio, over to the base of the stairs where a totally shocked Atlee was staring at both of them, he pulled Josh around and in a tight embrace, hiding his face at his chest. It looked like a father comforting his child.

With a scream of sheer wrath Sally´s voice broke.

The following silence was more surreal than the crescendo and the brightness before.

When Aidan felt Josh relaxing slowly and when he was certain that Josh was responsive again, he cupped his temples.

"Josh! Josh! That _wasn´t her_! Or maybe it was anything LIKE her. But you can´t help her when being sucked into hell or whatever it was…It is. It´s not Sally at all. Maybe a ghost of some hellish nature that tried to use her for luring you in there. Wherever …_in there_…will be!

Josh gasped and sniffed, his hand rising to his eyes when he tried to wipe away the tears. He thought that he was looking ridiculous, crying like an old woman. But when he looked up into Aidan´s eyes he only saw concern and sympathy.

The facial features of Aidan had returned to his pure human surface, hiding and caging in the vampire. Well locked into the depths of what Aidan was.

"WE…must save her!", Josh gasped.

"Yes! Of cause! We will save her but not this way!", Aidan tried to appease him.

That was it what Josh was going to talk about with him when he asked for Sally, he thought.

Poor Sally was caught in any twilight zone.

The reason for it he didn´t know but Aidan felt it was anything they would need help from outside. He was used to his vampire existence and the werewolf existence of Josh. Even when they pretended to be human or tried to live their lives as human as possible it was far, far away from what Sally was.

She was immaterial.

Her ghostly existence was far less connected to the world they were living in. She was caught after her death in a world that located anywhere between the material world and heaven. That was the reason normal people in general could not see her. Despite the fact that there were mortals like Zoe who were able to see her and to talk to her. So called mediums.

Werewolves and vampires, by themselves no normal beings, could communicate with her. Even interact.

So they needed to find a person who had the knowledge and the experience to reach Sally in whatever dimension she was caught.

"Josh, calm down. Please…" The _please_ spoken so softly in an attempt to make clear that he was willing to help him but the whole thing should have been taken very carefully. "Josh, we have to be very careful cause I for myself have absolutely no experience how to get Sally back… I´m undead but I hadn´t been in the world of the dead. I never died really. I was turned! And if we want to get Sally out of her…prison we´ll need a person who knows how to start this. And I suppose you don´t know also… We need anybody from…outside, I guess… Otherwise we endanger her and us! Us to be sucked up in the same hell she´s caught in, Josh…"

When Aidan ended his plea he waited for Josh to answer.

Josh trembled. He took a very long and deep breath before he spoke.

Aidan was right.

They could not start without a reasonable plan. Without help. They didn´t know anything about the zone, space or area…call it whatever you want…in which Sally was caught.

Or maybe the Reaper kept her prisoner.

"I…Oh my God, I don´t know whom we should ask for help…"

"What´s about Zoe? She works in the hospital with souls and newborn children…"

"Zoe? Zoe? She would be the last one to help Sally! Not after what the Reaper had done to her neonatal unit…through Sally! She blamed her for the destruction and the cases of death… We we´ll have to get anybody else…", Josh stated.

And that, by all means and in the worst case, could take a long time. Can´t simply put an advert in the paper: Ghost hunter or medium for the release of a caught ghost searched by a vampire and a werewolf. If you feel free to help us call Boston- 792-1223…, he thought.

Atlee stood silent, watching both men, then he sighed and when Josh lifted the head from the comfort of Aidan´s embrace he directed to the rooms upstairs.

"Yes?"

"If you…uhm give me the lamp I´ll try to connect the transfusion for Henry…", he began carefully.

"Henry!" Josh hit his forehead with his hand; "Oh Crap! I…I forgot him!"

"You for sure have really other problems than looking for a sleeping vampire…", Atlee excused with a smile.

"You´re right but I have my doubts you can install the system on him. I´ll come upstairs with you…", Josh grabbed the fallen lamp, his fingers unscrewing the bulb…just for the case…and went upstairs with the Dutch.

The bedroom, Henry´s little room, was for heavens sake silent like before. Even Josh in his mortal shape could smell the intense scent of dried and fresh blood that hung in the air. He placed the lamp post beside the bed, hung the bag with the blood onto it and connected the tube to the needle he had inserted into Henry´s clavicular vein. By that he would be able to move his arms around without getting trouble with the system. And Josh had free access to his arms for washing and making poultices with cold water.

Henry was quite silent and he felt for the pulse.

It was fast like before, his skin unnaturally hot and he was slightly shivering. Josh felt his forehead and the eyelids of the vampire fluttered. He bent down to him, his voice low and calm;

"All okay, Henry…Do you hear me?"

"Y…y…yes…", Henry whispered weakly.

He was swimming in a cloud of fog, his limbs numb and with much effort he could feel soft and cool sheets under him. His upper body was totally numb and he had no control nor did he feel any pain. When he forced his eyes open to narrow slits it took him a whole eternity until he made out a pale oval above him and behind that the dark ceiling. A hand stroked his forehead and his temple, a...what had to be a thumb caressed his curls.

"Is there pain, Henry? Tell me…"

"N…no…"

"Okay. Please try to relax. I´ll stay with you…you´re in a friggin´ high risen fever…To be honest I don´t understand that in a vampire but what is going on is going on… You will heal. Don´t worry…but you have to take your time for it…"

"Sa…safe?"

"Yes, you´re safe here. We brought you into our house…No one can enter without our invitation and you can believe me! I won´t let any of your companions in!"

"Wood?", he gasped.

"No, you´re in Boston. Amidst a city to large to search for you…quite safe in here, Henry…now relax…", Josh said.

"Wh…what…bout…Ai…dan?" Henry´s eyes tried to move around, searching the room for his _father in_ _vampire_. His all too fast beating heart speeding up additionally. Finally he gave up, too weak. Cool hands stroked his temples to comfort him in his frightened condition. Henry was for sure totally thrown off the track. The morphine and the fever shading his mind, reducing his ability to respond nearly down to point zero. He seemed to have forgotten that it had been Aidan and Josh who brought him in.

"Aidan is okay, Henry…And you have to sleep I recommend! You´re weak and seriously injured but the blood will help…You´ll be better soon…" Josh sat down on the edge of the bed, looking over the body of the vampire that was sparsely covered by a thin woolen blanket, pulled up to his groin, letting his chest bare. Josh stared at the large bandage that covered the wound, its white material barely making any difference now to the pale skin.

It wouldn´t make much sense to turn Henry over to the left or the right side despite the fact that his back was wounded too and additionally covered with scratches and abrasions where they had brutally pulled him trough the woods. In his feverish condition he would not be able to control his movements and Josh was glad that Henry was lying calmly now in the sheets.

"Wa…want…" Henry mumbled.

"What? What do you want, hm?"

"Thir…sty!" The answer made Josh´s hair rising up.

"You wanna…eat?...You´re getting blood, now, Henry…", Josh looked into his eyes which doesn´t change. Black pools under narrow slits.

"Wa…ter!...Please. Need. Water…" Henry gasped desperately.

Josh breathed with relief.

My God! He felt tensed, his nerves tensed like wires. The answer, so simple it was let him release.

"Okay, Henry…"

Josh rose from the bed, filled a glass with water and placed a straw into it. His hand moved into Henry´s neck and he lifted his head so far he would be able to drink.

The lips barely opened and Josh wondered if he still would be able to drink at least. His movements indicated him stoned up to the cortex. But the thirst seemed to be an urgent need.

Henry swallowed hard, his gulps hurting in the beginning. His throat was dry and raw like the sands of a desert.

Josh saw how hard he fought and his sore lips clung around the straw like a man dying from thirst after walking the Sahara. He felt the trembling of Henry´s neck in his hand, weakened by exhaustion and the dullness of the morphine. Carefully he pulled his head upwards a bit more.

"Better, Henry?", he asked him with a soft voice.

The eyes closed once. A Yes.

"M…more…", Henry choked, his voice low and hoarse.

Don´t dare to think about what he had gone through that damned two weeks dangling from the ceiling with no blood and no water… Normally a human being would have died after two or three days; bled out and dried out by the massive lost of liquids, he thought.

He wasn´t used to vampires drinking pure water but blood contained water also and so it would be normal that their bodies needed water in any form, especially when it became hot during summer time or under extraordinary circumstances like now.

The door opened and Aidan appeared on the threshold.

"Uhm, here you are…", he said when Josh looked over to him.

"Where else? I told you I would care for him…", Josh gave back in a tone that let no doubt what he thought about the greeting.

"Him has a name!", Aidan countered. He sounded pissy.

Josh´s head turned around abruptly, the anger blazing in his eyes and he had to swallow hard to slug down a growl.

Man! Was his mind turning wolf without the body and the Full Moon rising?

"I know! But what for are you attacking me out of _him_ or _Henry_? I promised you I would care for your son! And for that: Adesso basta!", he growled.

Aidan rose his hands in self defense.

"Josh! I´m sorry! I didn´t mean it this way! But your voice…dripping with…"

"Dripping with what? Contempt? Aidan, don´t make me…"

"That´s not the word I attempted to use! What´s going on with you Josh? It´s due to you that we are both still alive! That I´m totally conscious of!" Aidan tried to bring his friend to terms.

He lent forward, glaring at Henry who was sucking urgently at the straw.

"If your companion Atlee hadn´t been the one to tell me what happened to you I would have never found out where you are…were. I couldn´t have gone to this Family or Vampire Society to ask for you…They would have fed me to the next stronger werewolf in cage!" He shuddered, remembering the night he had to fight the other one. " The very moment you told me that they had banished you from all I know that something would go really wrong… For you and for Henry when you decided to stay in Boston…"

Aidan suddenly understood why his dear friend was so upset.

Josh nearly had lost him. And he had lost the woman he cared for despite the fact she was a ghost. Not to mention he had lost his best mortal girl friend Julia…

The three roommates were standing their ground, clinging to each other, supporting each other in a world that called them monsters if they knew what they were. The had built up their own little family and the ropes were thin and sensible. So easy to cut. And Aidan realized what they meant to each other. Their lives had stabilized since they met. Josh had found friends and Aidan wasn´t a lonely anymore with his attempts to get himself out of the dependence from the Boston Family and to fight his addiction for blood without control.

They all had problems.

Sally when searching for her door, Josh when he lost control in the Full Moon nights of each month and Aidan when it came to feeding from a living source. He was well aware that when he lost control in one point for example with sex, he often lost control in the other, falling prey to his blood lust. And things didn´t become easier when he was cut off from the hospital´s blood bank.

Josh filled up the empty glass again, brought it to Henry´s lips. The sucking noises started newly and the dark eyes of the vampire traced over Josh´s face and finally stopped on Aidan. Despite the look was weak , the question was clearly written into it what was going on now.

Even when Henry was too weak to participate into the discussion he felt the tension between Aidan and Josh. He was so damn tired from the injection. Not uncomfortable but feeling strange. He moaned softly and Josh bent over him again.

"Don´t worry…it´s okay, Henry! We are not discussing you but another problem. Relax and drink…", Josh urged, his fingers massaging the tensed neck while supporting it.

Henry drank, the straw making hollow noises when he sucked up the cool water. Then he gasped and Josh set the glass on the nightstand.

"Enough, Henry?"

Eyes closing once. Yes.

"Okay. Let´s start cooling…and getting that fever down…"

Josh rose from the edge of the bed, smiled at Henry and left the room. Aidan was following him into the bathroom.

"He, Buddy! Don´t need any help going onto the pee box!", he pressed out when he felt Aidan´s hand confidentially on his shoulder. Aidan shot him a broad grin.

"No doubts!" He breathed once then went on; " I want to talk with you about Sally…"

Josh filled the bowl with fresh water, the sound of the streaming water helping him to fix into reality.

"We talked before, Aidan…", Josh´s tone sad and tired. For sure this night had taken its toll even on him, the experienced nurse and come-to-terms-with-vampires werewolf.

"Gee, I know, Josh! But I want to tell you that Sally isn´t meaning nothing to me! I care…and I fear for her as well as you do. Once I simply…found it kind of…unusual to live together with a ghost. You and I…we are very material beings despite the fact that we aren´t quite normal. But then I learned to like her…"

Josh stared at him.

"You have fallen in love with a ghost?" He shook his head in disbelief; "That´s really strange…"

Aidan´s eyes went wide. "What? Uhm, Josh, I´m definitely not fallen in love with her! I accept her and I simply like her as you like a nice person in common! And she´s in more than some distress now!" Aidan explained his feelings for Sally to make clear he wasn´t neither ignorant nor an opponent for Josh. Josh had to cope with his last and really hurting lost and couldn´t need another one.

Nor dispute in a house that was his only refuge, the only place he felt relatively safe. The place he had opened to another vampire out of friendship.

"Do you have any clue how and where to find anybody who´s kind of medium? A medium! That´s it what we need to bring her back. Like in _Poltergeist _where this elderly woman helped to clean the house…" Josh mumbled thoughtfully.

"Do not talk to me about cleaning the house! You know what happened in here when Sally´s husband came in with this woman who he ordered to exorcise the house! I don´t put much trust into exorcism!" Aidan warned him.

"I don´t mean exorcism. Possibly she´s possessed by any dark energy or creature out of hell. Maybe! But maybe it´s that Reaper! He had tortured her enough to nearly drive her mad and Zoe kicked his ass, keeping him in the distance. But Zoe is out of service! She won´t intervene again!"

"But maybe she knows anybody who can be of some help…", Aidan looked at Josh.

"_Some_ help won´t do it! Whether one brings her back or he/she doesn't know how! Then this person is out of duty! There will be no _trying,_ Aidan! Help or no help. But nothing in between!", Josh put force into his voice and Aidan nodded.

**Into the Limbo; Thou shall not falter nor fail shall your soul…**

Josh grabbed the bowl and hissed as water dripped onto his feet. He bit his lower lip, balancing the bowl with more care. It was filled up to the edge and cold water wasn´t the thing Josh wanted to find his socks soaked with.

He gulped down a curse, nodded over to the shelf beside the tub.

"Can you get some towels…?", he begged Aidan who grabbed an arm full of towels, suspecting there would be need for more than one or two.

He opened the door for him and Josh managed it to place the bowl onto the nightstand without further lost of water.

Aidan smiled inwardly because he knew how Josh hated it to spill anything. His OCD made him an straight cleaner.

Everybody has his own weaknesses.

Josh´s granted them with a clean house. In the hospital it had to be definitely clean, out of reasons and that was okay. But at home Aidan liked a little mess because it made a clear difference to the sterility of tiled rooms, giving a home a touch of life.

"Can I help you…?" Aidan offered. He saw and felt how tensed Josh was. A condition he was suffering from all night long. No wonder.

Josh nodded silently and pulled back the blanket that covered Henry, baring his legs and groin. To simplify matters they had waived to dress him in a new set of pants.

Henry heard them approaching but he felt tired with a heaviness that forced him down into the sheets and made it nearly impossible to open his eyes barely to narrow slits. So he still was lying and tried to listen to the sounds they made. The blood was streaming in his ears with that strange whoosh as behind a curtain of batting, his head felt like rolling around on the pillow without control. He moaned softly and felt that a hand grabbed around his ankle, carefully lifting his left leg.

His limbs felt numb and there was a touch of fingers, sliding along his skin, feeling for the surface and he heard a voice directly beside him.

"That damn manacles…all sore around!" Aidan´s voice.

Henry wanted to tell him that he didn´t feel any pain despite the fact that anything was wrong with his leg, but his voice traced away to an inaudible mumbling. So he gave in and felt his leg being lifted. All of a sudden something cold was gliding over his skin, made him hissing with surprise and he shuddered under the cold that was moving up and down his leg before it clad his whole calf.

His fingers clung to the sheets and Aidan felt how Henry´s body tensed when the wet and cold towel was wrapped around the burning hot skin.

"Okay, okay…easy…easy, Henry…relax…that will help…no pain, simply cold in the beginning…But we have to do something against that fever that is burning within you…", Aidan tried to soothe him. Then he turned his face to Josh.

"Henry isn´t used to it…he goes all tensed with the cold…we have to go on quite slowly…giving him time to fit in…", Aidan warned Josh to be careful.

"I know. But that´s the only thing I suppose it´ll help in vampires…I´ve no experience with it on your kind. Only did it often with sick children who were in a high risen fever…", Josh explained while he wrung a towel and began to wash the other leg.

Henry hissed and Josh felt his muscles tense under his hands.

"Okay…okay…same procedure as with your left leg…if you are aware which side is left…", he smiled; "Seems you´re somewhat off the track…but you better get used to it, my friend because that won´t be the only and the last time I´ll have to do this to you, Henry…"

"H…h…how…" A pale lip trembled with much effort.

"How long?...As long until your body decides to crank down that heater inside you…It´s the only way we can try to reduce the fever…And you definitely are having fever, what else you ever think about that option in your vampire brain…" Josh smiled at him when he saw that the eyes opened to narrow slits, the lids heavy like made of lead. "All okay. You have to be patient…"

He wrapped the towel around the right calf and Henry relaxed a bit.

Josh grinned at Aidan who looked at him somewhat bemused.

"Guess a vampire isn´t any much easier patient than a mortal one! Always the same: No patience!"

"You can´t compare Henry with your normal patients!" He sounded a bit reproachful.

"I know! Your kind…always a special case! Nothing of the common!"

"Would we be common, we would be dead long ago…"; Aidan grinned, baring his suddenly fallen fangs, his eyes went bled black.

"I don´t like it when you do this…out of nothing…", Josh complained.

"What am I doing out of nothing? What don´t you like?" Aidan did as if he won´t understand. Really he knew where Josh was going.

"That eye thing of yours…and the fangs…I mean…gee, if you are doing this without any reason…", Josh pressed out, not taking his eyes from the face of his vampire friend.

"Fangs? Fangs? Josh! I beg your pardon but who´s in here the one with the most impressive set of fangs? I have one. But you can call a double set of fangs your very property!" Aidan said referring to the fact that Josh was armed with werewolf fangs in the upper _and_ the lower jaw.

"I didn´t ask for them!" Josh grunted.

"I know…No offense meant!" Aidan laid a hand on Josh´s shoulder. Confidentially and with a smile that begged for pardon.

Contrary to his mortal friend Aidan never has had any problems with the fact that he had been turned into a vampire. He hadn´t begged for it and Bishop simply had done it out of own intentions but he had come to terms with it long ago. The only thing he never could and never would, was to forgive Bishop for killing his son and his wife in an act of cruelty in the attempt to pull Aidan onto the vampire side totally.

Cutting off brutally all connections to his mortal family.

He could have been going on to live as a vampire with the knowledge that one day he was going to lose his beloved ones by growing them old and dying.

He had hated Bishop for what he had done.

But Bishop was ashes. Dust.

Josh´s eyes rose and the smile he gave looked somewhat tortured but finally he nodded and turned back to Henry. His hands went over the naked body, washing the hot skin with a cold wash cloth. Henry moaned slightly, his eyes shut, but he didn´t fight against the hands.

When he fought his eyes open again, shuddering from a freezing cold feeling on his forehead, an oval came into view over him. Slowly he identified it as that of Josh.

"Ssshhh…easy, easy, Henry…", Josh tried to comfort him, his hand resting on his forehead; "…it´s all okay…you will get better soon…"

"Ho…how…long…slee…pin´…?", Henry gasped with much effort. He hadn´t any feeling for time, his head heavy like his limbs. He was shivering with weakness despite the blood that was running into him. He could slightly smell the bag with fresh blood that was hanging from the side.

Josh looked on his watch.

"You have slept about eight hours…it´s near twelve a.m. That´s quite okay. Better you´re gonna sleep that over. Your body needs time and blood to heal… Blood you´re getting since tonight. Bag number five is still running…God, I wonder where your body is putting in all that stuff…"

The wash cloth went. Water dripped in a bowl and the cool cloth came back, wandering over his forehead and his temples. Henry let himself fall into the comfort of it. He sighed slightly.

A feeling like from the days of his childhood when his mother had cared for him when he had been ill with fever or the flu. She had been a kind woman, caring for her family. And it had been her who had influenced him when he wrote in for the Army, deciding for the medical service.

You aren´t the one to kill men, Henry. That´s none of your business…for better you´ll become a doctor once the war will be over…, she had told him.

During WW1 there had been general conscription as long as a man wasn´t excluded by disablement. The only choice he had was to go to the medical staff of the Army.

There´s always a choice.

He hadn´t any choice when Aidan turned him vampire.

Or if you see death as a choice.

The wash cloth wandered down his throat, over his chest and to his shoulders. It felt comfortable and Henry gave himself into the feeling. He heard Josh´s heart beating more calmly. He had to be tired for sure since he had been awake all night long, not to mention the daytime before.

Henry tried to turn his head a bit so he could look at Josh.

The human sat on the edge of his bed, dark rings around the eyes and the smiling had vanished from his young face, giving room the signs of exhaustion.

"You…be..ti…red…" Henry brought out, his voice a whisper. His fingers trembled when he tried to cling to Josh´s arm.

"I´m…kind…of used to it! Long shifts in the hospital…", Josh answered with a tired smile. He felt the events of the night now when more than twenty four hours had gone by since they started the day. His leg began to hurt a bit where the wound had barely healed. But he didn´t mention it to Henry or Aidan.

"Better try to sleep again, Henry…Is there any pain?"

"N…no…" The dark eyes fell shut.

"Okay…" Josh felt for the skin temperature.

It had gone down a bit. Not much, but a little bit. Carefully he opened one edge of the bandage on Henry´s chest. It was the second one he had placed after the surgery. It was less soaked with blood and the wound had started to seal over.

Okay. So far…

Aidan appeared at his side, looked at Josh with concern.

"How are you, Josh…?" He sounded sorrowful.

"To be honest…I´m tired but I´ll cope with it…"

"You need to sleep, Josh! You yourself are still in a healing and your leg must be hurting after all…" He looked at Henry; "How is he?"

"Better. The fever has lowered a bit…at least. The wound is sealing over…"

"Okay, Josh…let´s take a change…go sleeping, I´ll take over…Doing that wrappings…that´s something I can do too! You´ve done so much for us. Now it´s time I´ve to participate…" His voice had become a much darker one, with a manipulative timbre he normally used when it came to compel a mortal donor/victim.

Josh was receptive for it. There were only few who were able to resist.

Josh nodded, put the wash cloth in the bowl and rose from his place.

"Call me in if you need…Or if Henry needs further morphine…I´m in my room…gonna take a heap of sleep…"

"Okay. Fine…", Aidan smiled and watched his friend walking out of the room. His movements heavy and he was limping a bit. Aidan saw it with concern. The jumping into the grave, onto the surface of the coffin, must have hurt a lot. He knew how painful gun shoot wounds could be…

A pattering against glass and a muffled howling were the sounds that penetrated into Henry´s sleep. The constantly sounds pulled him to the surface. He tried to concentrate, his mind cringing when he tried to find out what it came from.

Slowly he opened his eyes to narrow slits. This once he managed it with less effort than the last time. He breathed deeply, felt for his body.

Cool air on the surface.

_tbc_


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter 6_

_And hell thou find on earth, no shelter given..._

Paul and McLean were driving back to the abandoned road where they had parked the truck. McLean was in a relaxed and good mood. The business had gone well with the owner of the arena and they thought their precious prey stored safe and ready to go on Friday. One vampire more handled over to be killed by humans who paid for the fun of killing a monster. There were always humans out there who liked to play out their hidden urges. Murder was one of it. Give them an option to live through their urges, canalizing it in directions to be under controlled conditions before one or another of them would turn his intentions onto human beings. Murder. Normally strictly forbidden and punished by law when it came to human victims… But this was another side of the medal! Vampires were no human beings, they were monsters to be tilted from the surface of earth! And by this is was not murder but a _clean up_ in order to save humankind from their hellish intentions. .. Like you´re gonna extinct rats or a virus.

Vampire blood was a virus. A virus that had spread over Boston far too long since there had been no vampire hunter who had the guts to fight what was called a fairy tale, a mythos created to reign in children.

Tonight they were successful again. The grave had contained what it had promised: A vampire, male, tall, starved long enough to be handled by two human men who were simply determined enough to take up the challenge! No such difficult task to dig him up, muzzle him, drowsy as he was by darkness, isolation and starvation, and to bring him into the cage for transport. That monster was still tied what meant that it didn´t place himself in the coffin by its own free will. Others must have done this. Vampires or humans. Humans to keep him off or simple store him for any reason. But they, McLean and Paul, had been faster in digging up as whoever.

Taking their prey to the truck, storing it in the cage helpless as its was by good luck, and then going for the despicable food it needed.

Mclean strictly avoided it to call them _he_ or _she_! No relation to humans. It meant these creatures to be a thing! Despicable, monstrous, destined to be eradicated. Like the plague, like a spreading disease that was to destroy the earth and all the living beings around. Including the species of the werewolves who were higher beings, even in relation to humans. Werewolves were the perfection of a branch of earthly life! They were the ones to hold the top position of the food chain.

They had stored that snarling, growling heap of shit in the cage and back from the slaughterhouse, McLean had driven by again to the place where they had dug it up. There was a house not far away and there had been a car parked in the narrow road to the area.

Inside the car he had found a victim of these monsters: A man in a disastrous condition, he had been knocked around by anybody, his face bloody and swollen, semi-comatose and either he himself or anybody else had hung him a blood transfusion, obviously to absorb the blood loss he must have suffered by these monsters. Covered with a woolen blanket up to his chin, except for the area where a transfusion set was inserted into his clavicular vein. It looked professional. The man´s eyes were closed, his lids had once opened to such narrow slits in the darkness of the car, he couldn´t make out the color of the eyes. Maybe the man got a hint of a view of him but then he had fallen back into his sleep…

No prey.

A victim.

He seemed to have himself locked in inside the car and after a closer look on him, Mclean had decided to leave. The man seemed to be able to care for himself. Or another human cared for him. They had been in a hurry. No time to be lost to feed the slaughterhouse stuff to their prey and then going for the arrangements of the arena.

Deeply sunken in his memories of the hours before, McLean reached the empty road. The car stopped opposite the truck and McLean switched off the head lights. The sound of the engine subsided and a moment he looked over to the drivers cabin of his truck. The night was silent and no trespassers were around. This damn hole out of nowhere in the woods was not much less wasted than any point on Mars.

Paul and Liam McLean left the car and walked over to the side of the truck.

"Damn! Look that! Any freakin´ picklock has broken the lock on the passenger´s side door! Got that? Who the fuck…!", McLean cursed when he opened the door. And a new gush of execrations came out of his mouth when he discovered the chaos inside the drivers cabin.

Every corner and every compartment inside had been tossed up and around. His and Paul´s belongings were lying in a chaos spread over the cabin. McLean grabbed for the box where he stored his drivers- and car documents. He smashed the lid open, crawled through the content. Let out a breath of release.

The documents were complete. Obviously had the bastard searched for anything else. Money, food or else.

Paul stood with widened eyes beside the car.

"Do you have any clue who could have been that? Out here? We´re so far from Boston and this road is empty. We didn´t even meet a single car the whole time since we drove to here…", Paul speculated. "Is anything stolen, Mr. McLean?", he asked from outside.

"No! That´s the thing! My money and my documents are still here! Even the whole damn truck is stuck to that place. I wonder what one was searching for that verified such a chaos to be left over!", McLean barked from inside.

Then he cursed again.

The hooks that hold the crowbar were empty. Broken like to be pulled off their position with sheer force. His fingers grabbed a broken part of metal and lifted it from behind the seat.

"That metal should be strong enough to resist any crash! Don´t want to be knocked off by a goddamn flying crowbar! The less to be broken like a damn eggshell!"

"That means…anybody who is strong enough to…", Paul began and before he could go on, McLean jumped out of the drivers cab, pushing Paul to the side and with large speed he ran to the backside of the truck.

"Vampires! Damn bloodsucking bastards of vampires!", he shouted when he discovered that the padlocks were broken and the bars torn loose that once held the doors closed.

With gritting teeth he smashed the heavy metal doors open, switched on the bright fluorescent tubes under the ceiling.

But he really didn´t need the bright light to see that the cage was broken open and his prey was gone.

Raging with wrath he stepped through the loading space. He grabbed the crowbar from the steel bottom where Josh had let it drop simply, and whirled it through the narrow room. It crashed into the wall, barely missing Paul´s head who ducked in reflex.

"Damn! Get down or do you wanna kill me with that thing?! Better stake any condemned vampire!" Paul shouted angrily when he rose again. He stared at the chaos.

The door of the cage was broken open, it´s hinges deformed totally and the remains of the massive iron bar door were hanging strangely torn on the ground. It looked like any giant had raged in here.

"That couldn´t have been it!", McLean growled and directed into the empty prison cell. "That damn vampire was to weakened to break out by himself!" He kicked the metal pieces into the cage, grabbed his hands onto his hips and stared in disbelief and anger into the cage.

"Maybe the poisoned blood had made him stronger than imagined instead of …"; Paul began but was shut up by McLean.

"Don´t call that monster _him_! It´s a damn beast! No…", he almost choked at the word; "…no _being_! It´s inhuman! A monster from hell! Don´t never ever forget that, Paul!" He grabbed his assistant by the shoulders and shoved him aside.

This idiot! Paul obviously hadn´t got it with what they really were handling with. With monsters! Not any creepin´ animal to be sold over to a zoo. They weren´t animal hunters or animal catchers, they hunted vampires!

_He_ was the vampire hunter!

Paul simply was a somewhat dim assistant, even not the brightest bulb in the box when it came to planning, but overly money-grubbing and always looking for his personal benefit. That turned him into an useful henchman as long as McLean kept him in guard.

"Any of that bloody bastards must have found the truck and robbed me…"

"Us!" Paul dared to correct him. McLean shot him a glare that would have killed piranhas.

"He..IT was mine! Robbed me of my prey and my money! You´re only paid for your assistance!", he directed onto his chest, ducked for the metal parts and smashed them with a hard Dong against the truck walls. Then he smashed his fist against the innocent wall. His palm was tingling. It didn´t use anything but it helped somewhat.

"It won´t help if you´re going to ruin the truck totally!", Paul grunted and stepped back from his raging partner.

"Don´t. Tell. Me. What I have to do!", McLean growled at him and bent deeper. His hand touched the cold steel ground, searched for anything Paul couldn´t make out. Then his finger felt over a thin and dried layer of what must have been a dark liquid. He lifted his fingertips to his nose, rubbing them and smelled.

He was right.

That was dried blood. His olfactory senses were well trained and he could make out a hint of the stabilizer that was used in bagged blood from hospitals. That blood came from a blood bank. Not the way of food…he cringed at the thought of _food_…that vampires normally were consuming. Either a vampire had brought bagged blood in for himself or he knew of this thing and its hunger after weeks of starvation. Had brought in nutrition for its companion.

McLean rose again and swallowed down a growl of desperate anger. He looked at Paul.

"Anybody had stolen my property! And the problems will really start when I can´t deliver right on Friday! The fight will have to be cancelled and my partner will be very angry. That whole spectacle costs a lot of money. He has a loss and I get lost of my money I spent into getting all that information together to get to that freak thing!"

"What, if we try to get another one? You´ve said whole Boston is full of these…things!" Paul looked that he said things, not being or any other word. McNeal was kind of haughty about his own kind. That kind people who some seventy years ago in another part of the world started their own war. Paul wasn´t sure if his boss was descendant of any high risen family, noble men or where he came from. He only knew him to be extremely proud of anything with himself and contemptuous of vampires. He often had talked about some kind of mission to tilt these blood-drinkers from the surface of earth, a call of duty, risen by anything that had happened in his family´s past. Maybe it had to do with the loss of his children…

"Try to get another of these things? How do you imagine it?", McLean barked at him.

"When there was one, maybe there would be another one, Mr. McLean. We should go back and search through the area at least. You told me, you found a victim, locked in in a car, with a blood transfusion running. And this thing we had dug up couldn´t have done the damage to the victim because since we got him up, he hadn´t be out of our surveillance… So there´s maybe a chance to find more of them and we´re gonna need only one for the moment. A male one. If you didn´t give your partner a photo of his next opponent…So he won´t know what he looks like…Right?", Paul recommended.

"Glee, that has something, I have to confess. The idea isn´t a bad one…but it´ll be difficult." McLean smiled at him and Paul shuddered under his glare. It was kind of unearthly.

His leg was caught in a heavy thing that handicapped his attempt to pull it upwards in a reflex. Warm, moist. He moaned with protest, forced his eyes open finally and slowly lifted his head.

With surprise he found it possible. The heavy leaden feeling was gone but his brain protested against the sudden move with a wave of nausea rising dizziness.

Henry tried to realize what was going on with him.

Slowly he became aware that he was lying in a bed, naked from shoulders to his feet. A large bandage pad was taped to his chest and he smelled dried blood. There was no pain. Only the tension. His ankles were wrapped in towels that were drying, warm and moist. That were the things that kept his legs kind of nailed to the sheets.

When Henry moved his head he felt a stitch like from the bite of a bee in his shoulder throat area. With much effort and taking his head backwards so far he could see, he realized that a needle was inserted into his clavicular vein. A slim flexible tube led to a bag at a nearby lamp post.

Blood transfusion.

Anybody had provided him with blood.

He sighed.

He had no clue how long he had been sleeping this way. The sounds came from outside and Henry could them differ now. Sleet was pattering against the window and the wind made a howling sound when it surrounded the house. It was utterly silent in the room but for the calm and strong heartbeats of a vampire.

Carefully he looked over to the chair beside the window with its closed curtains. Dim light from the vanishing day filled the room and in a corner another lamp was dimmed to a soft level of light as if not to disturb his sleep.

Aidan was sitting in the chair, his chin sunken on his chest and when Henry gave off a hoarse sound he abruptly opened his eyes with the long lashes, his head rising out of the sleeping position and eyes, seemingly for a second bled black out of reflex, looked over to him.

"You´re awake, Henry! How do you feel? Any pain…?"

"Better. Thanks…", Henry mumbled, surprised that he was able to speak relatively normal but in a low voice.

"Don´t thank me, Henry…This you owe…like me..to Josh. And Atlee. They came for both of us to get us free from hell…For that you´re the one who had been in the far worse condition…"

"Remember…is difficult. All like in a colored blur…" Henry brought out. He tried to remember details but everything was like in a fog.

"You had been damn off the track, Henry…Josh filled you up with morphine, up to the cortex. We brought you in after we got you free from that hook and you were nearly unconscious. Gotten stoned. But the really hard way. Otherwise you would have gonna scream down the walls when he cleaned your wounds. Josh is a damn good surgeon…even on vampires…" Aidan smiled.

"I…I´m so sorry…"

"You won´t have to be sorry for anything, Henry!"

"How long…? Did…I…sleep?" Henry had absolutely no plan for anything. Much less the time he had spent in here. The only thing he knew was, that this room was kind of familiar to him. Had been used by him before. Everything else was hidden in the all over thick fog of excruciating pain, unbearable hunger, fear, the scent of blood, old and dried and fresh. Mother´s voice, sharp and cold, her hands that sent him into fire when hands had worked at him. The voice and face of Atlee over a time he couldn´t differ and occasionally the relief of an injection that tilted his agony for a short time at least. The memories made him tremble with fear.

Aidan saw that Henry was slightly shivering, his face tensed and he could read clearly that barely hidden hint of fear. He knew his son all too well, knew his range of expressions in the young and beautiful face, so that he could read in it like in an open book without talking.

Aidan´s hand wandered to Henry´s forehead, his thumb stroking the skin that was much cooler now, giving him a feeling of comfort and shelter.

"How long? Long enough…it´s nightfall…we came home last night at 2 a.m. Josh shot you with enough morphine to sent a horse sleeping. Atlee told me that he watched over you when you were imprisoned. It was him who prevented you from being tortured and being slit open to let you die slowly by bleeding out. Mother wanted revenge for what I had planed and I´m so sorry she carried it out on you in exchange for me instead…I´m so sorry, Henry…."

Aidan breathed sharply, his heart racing when he thought what Atlee had told him while Henry was sleeping under the morphine. How unbearable short before he had been to lose Henry for ever!

That bitch Mother had planned for Henry to torture him to death slowly, not only by starving him but by mutilating him limb by limb over a long period… Henry should have paid for what Aidan had attempted.

Her cruelty as a leader was unmatched.

Nausea rose within him and he gulped hard, his Adams-apple jumping.

Better not to go into details. Henry had suffered enough.

"I..I became…witness…her slitting open another vampire...next to me…!", he whispered with a choke, his lips trembling when he spoke. A tear appeared in the corner of his eye and he tried to regain control. "I…I had…closed…with life! I…was waiting…for anybody to stake me! Even Atlee…I was asking, begging, urging him for it! I…couldn´t bear anymore…" His voice broke and he started sobbing. Bloody tears streaming down his cheeks.

Aidan wrapped his arms around Henry, pulling him into a close embrace. His left hand felt the bandage on Henry´s back and he carefully shifted his hand not to hurt him. Felt him shaking under the sobs.

Henry was his blood and seeing and feeling him so desperate it made him feeling like his own heart was to be ripped apart. Their connection was strong enough even to stand up against the events of the past. The very first years when Henry´s behavior often had driven him mad. Getting close…too close…with Suren, the royal one, had almost cost him his life, banishing him from all vampires for what she had accused him for. Her fault and failure: his punishment.

But Suren was gone.

So one was left who will have to pay for everything…

And if this will be the last thing I´ll be doing…", Aidan was swearing under his breath. He won´t let Mother run free for what she had done to them all over the time.

The door was opened to a narrow slit and Josh peered in. When no one denied him entrance he moved in and stopped near the bed. His eyes heavy from tiredness but uneasiness had ward him off his own bed. And down into the kitchen where he had boiled a large pot of water. Making tea with that herb called feverfew.

Josh waited, uncertain if to say a thing. Finally when Aidan bedded Henry back he approached the bed, placed the tablet with the large tea pot and a cup on the kitchen table that was still standing in the room.

Aidan´s look turned over to the table.

"I´ve brought you tea. Herbs. Feverfew...", Josh mumbled after a closer view into the still bled black eyes and dropped fangs of his friend. The tea wasn´t unnecessary. Aidan was still vamped-out from the garlic poisoning, despite the fact that he tried to hide his condition from Josh. Josh could feel the discrepancy in him.

Aidan sniffed and his face tore with disrelish.

"Don´t look at it like you´re gonna drink horse-pee! It´ll help you to switch back to normal, Aidan, won´t it? Last time it helped...So don´t make such a face. There are things much more worse out there..."

"You wanna me drink that whole pot?", Aidan directed to the one-and-a-half-liter teapot, his face pure disgust.

"That´s medicine! No food! You have gotten blood, now the medicine follows. Counterpart to usual: First the medicine, than the kickshaw! I´m a good parent!", Josh grinned and filled the first cup with the herbal tea, reached it over to Aidan. Aidan grabbed the cup, decided to smell as less as possible and gulped it down in one swallow. Josh looked at him.

"That worse...?"

"Don´t ask me!", Aidan growled and took the second cup. Trying to ignore the taste and the smell, Aidan drank. Josh watched him closely. It would take some time for the tea to work, but...

Useless to ask if everything was okay.

Quite clear it wasn´t.

Not when Aidan looked tormented and Henry´s face was stained with bloody tears. Josh hoped they didn´t have a dispute. But Henry looked like it was him who needed support and comfort and this was not arising out of a cat´s and dogs… And Aidan would be mad if he started a discussion with a man/vampire barely alive again…

So instead of talking nonsense Josh bent forward, reached out for Henry´s wrist and felt for a pulse and the skin temperature.

"Could you sleep, Josh?", Aidan asked meanwhile. He sipped at the third cup with tea. The taste didn´t become better the more he drank of it. Strong taste of chamomile. The air hung full of it. Sweet, aromatic.

"A bit…not that much I would call satisfying but better than nothing…", Josh grumbled while he silently counted the pulse. "I´m not immortal…but hard to kill otherwise…", he tried to smile and Henry looked at him astonished.

"How are you feeling, Buddy…?", he asked the younger vampire. "Any pain…?" The most important question. It sounded professional but it was meant honestly. These vampires in their despair had brought him to his edges. The more familiar he became with Aidan and finally Henry, the more he felt responsibility for them.

Henry had proved himself a man of trustworthiness.

Josh had been having problems with trusting any other vampire. After what had happened to Aidan when an uninvited Bishop nearly killed him. And when a Dutch Elder called Hegeman tried to shoot him, Josh, while turning werewolf. Josh had been afraid for his own and Aidan´s safety when letting in another vampire. Of Henry he knew nothing. Aidan´s long lost son had been uncertain waters. But now it was showing that he was made of the same stuff like Aidan.

Both men looked at each other for a moment and Josh felt pity for him.

"Let me see…" Josh bent down to him, felt his forehead, the temples and finally over the calves. The skin was cooler. Definitely.

"That looks good. You aren´t so ho…", he bit his tongue by the intention it would rise, corrected himself; "…your temperature has fallen…the fever is lowering. That´s quite good to see… Is there any pain in the moment…?"

Josh hoped that vampires couldn´t fall addicted to morphine like human junkies. Henry´s body had reacted on the stuff like that of a human: analgetic effect near to the narcosis, drowsiness, sleep. There it made no difference. For luck! If the morphine would not have worked on Henry, Josh wouldn´t have known what to do to tilt his excruciating pain.

He had knocked him off. But only to get him free from that damn hook.

"No pain…", Henry answered, his voice trading away.

"I´ve to know this because I have to control your wounds!", Josh insisted.

"Go on…it´s okay…I…", he mumbled.

"Hello! Henry!" Josh waved his hand in front of Henry´s face, shook his head when the eyes closed. "HENRY?"

Henry didn´t react.

"Unconscious!", Josh stated; "That solves the last question before…Okay, let´s go. Give me a helping hand please, Aidan…"

"He had gone through more than even a vampire can stand…", Aidan closed and helped Josh to turn Henry over so he could control his back.

Carefully he peeled off the bandage pad. The wound had closed and was dry now despite the fact that Henry was lying on his back. The deep abrasions from the woods had healed.

"Uhm, that freakin´ hole has closed at least and the abrasions are gone! Looks satisfying…I wondered where Henry put all that blood in…Sucked up from his body like by a sponge! You are a really frightening species…you vampires. Wish my leg would have healed that fast!", Josh grumbled and placed a new pad onto the wound.

"We are not frightening. We are unique, Josh!" Aidan countered with a grin.

"Unique! You just don´t have any problems, haven´t you?" Josh grined and the situation went out of hand when his bared teeth were answered by Aidan with black eyes and a monstrous grin with bared fangs. Aidan smiled from one ear to the other, but it looked really shocking, now that he tilted his head in a gesture both exposing and demonstrating his vampire teeth.

Josh gave a shrieking sound. More out of fun than out of fear and Aidan started a roaring laughter.

It was good to relax a bit by joking around.

When Josh caught his breath again, he sniffed demonstratively, his nose cringed and near to Aidan.

"He! What´s up, Josh? Got a cold out in the woods?", Aidan gave a view and bent back a bit.

"No! I´m okay! You showered?"

"Last time..."

"Before you got grounded? Or after? Aidan, don´t make me...!", Josh stared at him in a mixture of skepticism and disgust. "Smells like..."

"Maximum a bit of that damn garlic. You can wash and shower all over but one doesn´t get rid of that damn smell."

"How human!", Josh stated with a grin.

"Human?" Aidan´s brows knitted above the still black eyes.

"Yeap. Humans eating bulbs are giving that off all over...seems a familiar effect...Allicin disulfite. The stuff dreams of anti-vampy-repellent are made of. Has anybody ever had the idea to make spray cans with it, like pepper spray for defense. If they would know what that makes of you..." A grin split Josh´s face.

"I showered, Josh! But...", Aidan protested.

"At least better than the stench from that half rotten box they packed you in..." Josh looked at him. "How I´ll get that smell out of my car...uncertain...", he mumbled shrugged his shoulders.

"There...there...was...a man...", suddenly came from the bed. Josh turned around to Henry who came back into consciousness. His lids half closed and Josh thought the words to come out of any memory or a fever dream.

"You...you kind of dreaming?", Josh asked him. Anywhere he had heard that vampires didn´t dream when they were sleeping. But Henry had gotten enough morphine to make his sleep abnormal. More near to narcosis than to usual vampire sleep.

"Ye...yes.", Henry mumbled weakly.

"You dreamed of a man? Where?", Josh tried to find out.

"No...no dream...", Henry choked and in a reflex Josh shoved his hand protectively under Henry´s neck to support him but the choking became a gasp and Josh felt him relax a bit.

"There...was a man...outside...car..." Henry tried to remember, tried to put fragments of a memory and pictures together. It was difficult. He had been lying in the car, on the backseat, and he had been nearly unconscious under the massive dosage of morphine Josh had him shot to tilt his excruciating pain from his perforated chest.

Josh tried to put together the words to make sense of it.

A man outside the car...

"Where and when, Henry, did you see him?"

"You put me...in the car...I slept. I was alone. You...you all gone..."

"You mean when you were alone in my car while we searched for Aidan?" Josh had a terrible suspect. There had been no human or vampire alive around, not after Atlee killed the guards...

"Have you seen the man?"

"Only...shortly...I...I woke up...was sleeping...or passed out...don´t know...But saw him...outside. He...looking into the car...but I was...too tired. Man in...his middle ages...never seen him...before..."

"At the Council you mean? He wasn´t a vampire?", Josh pushed mildly.

"No...vampire...", Henry´s voice was tired and weak. For sure the morphine still took its toll on him. "Never him...before. Just...just looking at me...then he dis...appeared..."

"Did he say anything? Talked to you whatsoever...", Josh forced onto him, his heart beating faster.

"No...middle to...older man. Short...hair. I fell asleep...Next...you came. With...Aidan!"

Josh tried to make sense of it. Anybody had been near the car, had looked into it and had seen Henry. For good luck Henry was covered with the blanket so his wounds weren´t visible from outside. And it was dark, so his blackened eyes weren´t visible. Only the transfusion set. Obviously the man, who ever it had been, went away without so much as an attempt to get to Henry.

Josh had the strong suspect that this man maybe had been the same who had imprisoned Aidan into this cage in the truck.

When this was true, then Henry had survived only by coincidence. Because the man had taken him for a human...

A cold shudder ran down his back and his glance was full of fear when Aidan looked at him.

"Who the heck had this ominous man been?"; Josh gasped. He looked at Aidan, his lower lip trembling.

"Can you describe the man who had dragged you into this cage?"

_… __and your soul to be punished with fire._

The voices were a choir.

High pitched and disturbing.

Sally pressed her hands on her ears but even the strongest force couldn´t keep off the crescendo. Her body cringed with fear and pain and a face came close to her in an amazing speed.

She shrunk back.

The face looked like molten lead. Grey and liquid like the surface of water crimped to waves by a fall storm under a grey sky. Sally pulled her arms around her body, trying to staedy her body against the blow. Her eyes not letting go the frightening image.

The face whirled around her in circles that became more and more tight like it was going to strangle her finally. A black flood of tendrils was following the molten structure like a tail. When the structure finally stopped in front of her face the tendrils were moving by its own like the snakes on the head of a Medusa.

What seemed to be arms that were pulled from their sockets, closed tightly around her. Her back, her chest were locked into an embrace that would kill a human right away. The wafting surface of lead stabilized itself to a grotesquely deformed mask of a once human face.

Dark eyes that spat fire bore into hers.

Sally recognized the facial features that looked scarred.

The Reaper.

She yelled with fear, her own voice of panic a demon like crescendo in her ears.

What had to be the Reaper´s mouth opened and a long tongue shot out, licked over her face before a preternatural dark voice yelled directly into her face…

"Sully! My sweeet Saalllly!...Looook…whaaat you…did to meee! How do…ou dare…dis…dis…obey yourrr MASTER! You blind bitch! You…"

With every word he screamed into her face he seemed to get more and more control over his voice, so the words came clearer but in a staccato.

"…you dared to shred yourself and…by this shredding MMMMEEE!" The face like mask deformed to a whirling spot before it returned to a facial thing that hung merely centimeters from her.

Sally thought to smell a hellish smell of sulfur and hot metal and she tried to free herself from the embrace but he was so strong that his hands…if you will call claws a hand…went right through her own structure, pulling at her soul with such a force it was going to split her very being.

"MEEE…!" Green light, glaring, flashing and twitching, poured from his hands, sheathing her whole structure. Sally started to scream. She fought with all her strength, trying to shield her very soul from the attack by the Reaper. She tried to imagine how an armor locked her soul in, building a wall around her and how his hands and the energy was ward off like a bullet from a solid rock.

"NO! NO! NO!" , she screamed with sheer force. Her claw-like hands going for the Reaper´s throat in an attempt to push him away from her, but his arms were longer than hers and became the longer the more she pushed.

"I…I…WILL…YOUR…SOUL ! IT´S MINE! NOW! MINE! MIINEEE!" His claws went right into her soul, breaking through the walls like through butter. Sally screamed with panic, her voice going wild and in a staccato.

"GET. OUT. OF. ME ! MY SOUL…IS…MINE! MINE! I DESPISE YOU. YOU. ARE. DEMON!", she screamed and tried to pull away from him, but she felt when he rose up his strength and her soul began to slip from her structure. The blinding green glare became brighter and brighter and his screams filled the space around them.

"YOU ARE DEMON! SALLY I´M GONNA EAT YOUR SOUL! Eat your SOUL!...IT´S MINE!

Madness holding him in its grip.

Her hands shot forward and she screamed. Sounds that weren´t words anymore but sheer wrath. Growls and yells poured out of her mouth that became a giant black hole with fangs like teeth and a hellish roaring came out of that pitch black crater.

Claws grabbing for his life force.

They pulled and pushed. Forward and backwards but slowly her strength began to break under the attack of a thing that was ages older than her. She had tried to fight him once before.

And once lost.

And now she was going to lose again and finally.

Her whole soul screamed NO!

Her eyes widened with wrath and fear, her soul cringing in agony under the attack. The light, green and a glare like that of a sun, began to protrude from her when the Reaper pulled her life force out of her inch per inch.

Sally felt her soul leaving her structure and she became weaker and weaker. Her inner structure beginning to break and to split. Deadness grabbed for her, filling her with an icy emptiness that was spreading within her with every second with the same speed with which her soul, her very life force was pulled out of her.

Sally broke down onto her knees, her structure melting and becoming strangely hollow and diffuse like fog. She became more and more translucent and her structure was flickering and uneven.

The Reaper laughed with devilish joy, his mouth a black hole that roared with laughter. Shaking the walls, the hall and Sally down to her base.

A bright green glare surrounded her and it was so bright she became nearly invisible in it.

The Reaper roared with enjoyment. He was going to win the day and Sally´s soul would be his for all eternity. She had tried to be a traitorous bitch and now he punished her for this by tearing her apart inch per inch. He was so confident of victory that he didn´t notice another force that came by.

He sucked up her life force.

Felt himself becoming stronger and stronger with each gulp of her essence.

All out of a sudden Sally was pulled away from him with a force that let him smash into the next wall. Her soul was pulled out of him, out of his mental and deadly grip and the _IT_ sent him whirling around like a ball in a pin ball wizard game. His soul was separated from her life force and a voice that let the walls shake and burst roared:

"How dare you, Reaper?! Sally is my precious prey! She´s mine and you…you are condemned to hell!"

"SHE is MINE!", he protested in disbelief.

"As long as you walked earth, Reaper! But the Limbo is my world! Don´t forget! You´re a whippersnapper in here and can call yourself happy I won´t feed on _your _soul!"

The Reaper was hurled into the remains of the wall, his green life force flickering once, twice. Then it faded away like a blown out candle.

The Reaper disappeared.

Sally was lying on the ground and with a bone cracking force the _IT_ slammed her soul back into her, grabbed her by the throat and sent her hurling away in a wild whirl.

She smashed into the wall and only her ghostly appearance saved her from being killed in the crash.

Sally shrieked with pain and her body dissolved into fog.

The_ IT_ stared at the place where the Reaper disappeared, then _IT _turned around and left with a roaring laughter.

From afar screams could be souls.

Burning in the fires of hell.

Aidan´s face was torn when he desperately tried to remember how the man had looked. The light in that damn truck had been so bright it burned in his eyes like a torch; his eyes which had spent the last weeks in stygian darkness, only to be exposed to a bright glare out of the fluorescent tubes. The garlic poisoning had made his eyes bled black, with the result that his pupils were widened extremely what made the light all more painful.

Josh could see how it worked behind Aidan´s forehead.

"It´s difficult to describe him...the light was so bright it burnt in my eyes. My eyes started to tear from it and I could barely see him. Only his voice...It was dark and forceful, fitting to a forceful personality..." Aidan licked his lips, then went on; "I would call him to be in his mid-fifties, with short cut gray hair. There...there had been another man around, much younger and the man called him...Paul..."

"Any further name? Paul what? Did he mention a family name?", Josh urged. Aidan shook his head.

"No surname. Simply Paul. This man seems to be his assistant or something like that. Anyway he has no right for...decisions, I think. The other one, the tall one is the boss. He called him...uhm..Mac...MacLane or anything like that..." Aidan tried to remember, his mind fought for the details. "McLean...yeap! This bastard was called McLean." Then a detail shot to his mind. The hint of a scent. A scent he had smelled first time when he met...Josh!

Werewolf.

"The man...he gave of the scent you sometimes have, Josh!" Aidan stared at him.

"What? I don´t give off any smell! I´m cleaning myself regular, Aidan. I use a bath tub! What smell..?", Josh seemed to be indignant by Aidan´s suggestion. "Don´t tell..."

"I know, Josh! My OCDC!", he grinned and his fangs were bared. The damn feverfew worked damn slowly, Josh thought.

"That´s not funny, Aidan!", he grunted.

"There was a scent of...werewolf! On him."

Josh stared at him. He didn´t believe what he heard.

"Were...werewolf? You sure, Aidan? They could have imprisoned a werewolf in that cage before! Are you really sure, Aidan?"

"It was definitely him! Not that cage or any urine full of rut hormones from a wolf! I couldn´t see much, but my nose still worked well! How can I miss such a scent? I live together with a wolf!"

Josh rose from the chair, his hands thrown up and he walked around in the bedroom like an alarmed chicken face to face with a fox.

"Josh...calm down. Please. What´s so disturbing about the fact that there is another werewolf outside in general?" Aidan stared at his friend who was far beyond upset. Josh walked through the room, his fists clenched and then he suddenly stopped beside the bed with Henry. His eyes fixed on the younger vampire who fought to stay awake. Josh´s face was reddened from excitement and his voice became hollow and low, when he whispered:

"McLean. A werewolf...You don´t have any clue? Don´t you?"

Aidan looked at him. Shook his head no.

"McLean! He`s the father of Brynn and Jon Cor McLean. The werewolf you killed"

"WHAT? You mean...you mean this bastard´..." Aidan´s face became more pale as it still was.

"Yeap! You got it! You killed his children and now he will go hunting! And you´re the prey! This man hates vampires over all! He´s kind of a Van Helsing, if this name has any deeper meaning for you!..." Josh turned away abruptly, took up his walking through the room on the border to become hysterically."

"SIT. Down, Josh!", Aidan commanded. Josh´s behavior wasn´t to calm down the situation.

Not to the slightest.

Josh went on with walking through the bedroom like a caged animal.

"JOSH!..." No reaction. Aidan sighed. "Josh! Please, sit down! Sit..." he fixed the face of his semi-mortal friend. Werewolf friend. Colleague in job. Roommate.

Henry moaned slightly and Aidan shot him a view. Lids were fluttering and the lips of his son opened to a narrow slit when he tried to turn his head to the side where Josh was walking back and forth, his feet stomping the ground.

Josh felt desperate, like the rug was pulled out from under him.

"this day today...grrg. There are days out there, you´re gonna lose your butt if it hadn´t been fixed to you by growing...or surgery!", he grunted, but his voice didn´t sound funny and he went on with walking the room.

Aidan´s eyes were following him and he rose from his seat and grabbed with both hands Josh´s upper arms. His hands closing tightly around tensed biceps muscles. With soft but definite force he pushed Josh down into the chair beside the bed.

"Sit. Down.", Aidan commanded again.

"Let me be!", Josh growled and he tried to get away from Aidan but the vampire was adamant. He crouched in front of Josh and looked up into his eyes, the torn face. He rose one hand and stroked Josh´s temple to comfort him.

"It´s all okay, Josh. We are off from this bastard and...". He breathed deeply; "The next thing we have to do is to search anybody who will help us to get Sally back, Josh!" Aidan looked over to Henry, his head tilting to the side, directing to him;"He´ll be better soon..."

"Like he has gotten any better that night you brought him in!", Josh sounded reproachful. His eyes rose to the face of his friend, than he watched over to Henry.

"No one died in here this night! " Aidan tried to calm him down, heard and felt his heart beating hard and fast, the rhythm a staccato in his ears.

Josh nodded weakly, he gasped for breath. Once. Twice. Then Aidan felt him relax a bit, felt the trembling under his hands which were lying on the human´s arms.

"Josh, okay...I´ll be fine and Henry will be fine soon...And then we will search anybody to help Sally..."

"I don´t know anybody...", Josh weakly mumbled and Aidan felt him shudder under an abrupt sniff. He cupped Josh´s chin and lifted his head. Josh tried to escape his grip but Aidan was insisting, even when Josh tried to turn his face to the side so the vampire wouldn´t see the tears that were dripping down his cheeks.

Eyes met and Aidan whispered; "It´s okay, Josh...", he allowed himself to wipe over the cheek with a thumb and Josh didn´t pull away. Aidan was wondering but he felt that Josh needed some comfort. His heart was

split by discrepancy and doubts.

An all too natural reaction. Josh had gone through so much trouble the last two or three weeks, had thought his friend to be lost and Sally was missing, was in a desperate situation and now he was to be confronted with another werewolf who seemed to develop as an enemy to all of them.

Henry had seen the man but he had been semi comatose so he wasn´t of great help to identify him. As long as he wouldn´t appear on the threshold, they could keep this problem outside. There were3 more urgent thing to solve.

"What about Zoe? She does some...preternatural stuff, I guess...maybe she knows anybody who finds a way to Sally." Aidan avoided it to say..._down _to Sally. Wherever _down_ would be. Maybe there was no down, only a chasm in time and space, an...area where souls were sent to be in some kind of purgatory. A _pre_-hell.

Josh didn´t know what exactly had happened with Sally. He had seen her the last time when he went into the woods and he had said Good Bye to her. Expecting to see her never again when he shoots Ray, kills him and would finally be free from the werewolf curse. To be free from this curse meant in the same moment that he would never ever be able to see Sally, the less to talk to her. He reminded the day he sat on the stairs of their house, peeling corn and had plugged his earphone into his ear to hide the fact that he was talking to anybody who was invisible to normal, mortal, people.

"Zoe won´t do that or help us with Sally, Aidan!"

"But she does that kind of stuff with ghosts! I´ve seen this row of all kind dead types standing in her neonatal ward, Josh! She kinda transfers souls into newborn children! Why won´t she be able to transfer Sally back from wherever she´s trapped? Sally is...she must be in some despair! You have heard her, Josh! Down in the living room! I have seen it, you did, and Atlee did!", Aidan directed downwards, to the room downstairs. "You told me she brought Atlee in here! By magic...without you being along...", he argued.

"Zoe did it for you and me! She wouldn´t help Sally again because she caused the Reaper to destroy her ward!"

"Sally for sure wouldn´t do something like that, Josh! She was killed herself and would never harm any babies!"

"You hadn´t seen the mess, Aidan!", Josh grunted angrily.

"I have seen a lot worse than that! Forgot?", Aidan answered.

"She did!", Josh spat.

"Then it wasn´t her! Like it wasn´t her what screamed down in the living room before. That voice of hers! It´s anything else. Maybe this freak of a Reaper! You have seen her, possessed by that thing with the dark voice when she was lying on base of the stairs! I really don´t know much about that stuff beside me being a vampire and you being a werewolf...Mostly I kept away from ghosts until Sally came. I´m not so much in disembodied stuff. I´m taking my fill from the living!"

"Don´t you understand Zoe? Won´t you be angry if anybody comes and destroys all what is worth to you?"

"There had someone destroyed what had been worth to me, Josh!", Aidan´s voice rose and he stared at Josh like a predator. "I had lost the most precious gift in my life! My wife and my son! And not because their lives were simply running out by time! Because they...they were killed by...Bishop!" Aidan spat the last word like a venom. His face was torn with pain and it looked like he would start to cry any moment.. Josh could see tears glistening in the corners of his eyes and Aidan swallowed hard. "He did it to separate me from the last thing that was human within me: my love for a human being. My family!"

Josh´s view wavered, he closed his eyes under the penetrating glance with which Aidan stared at him

"I´m...I´m sorry, Aidan...I didn´t mean that...I didn´t mean to harm you by your...memories!"

"Up to now I sometimes see them, with this monster standing over them, their throats torn and them being blood spattered all over! My son lying in the lab of my wife...her hands clung to him to...to protect him, when his life was torn from him by what was without mercy. Torn from him way too early...I smelled their blood and the smell drove me mad! I jumped for Bishop but by this time I wasn´t that strong like nowadays. He fought me off without effort and when I found myself being me again, Bishop had tied me like a captive, thrown on a carriage. They were all gone..." Aidan grabbed for his eyes, his fingers stained with bloody tears. He turned away from Josh abruptly, whirled around and sank in the chair beside the window. From afar he stared at the bed with his son.

Henry had turned his head to the window, he moaned softly from the effort it took him to move. He wasn´t in pain but still exhausted despite the blood he had gotten.

"What´s...going on here?", Henry weakly whispered. He felt tired beyond imagination.

"Sorry, if we have disturbed you...still...still talking problems.", Josh tried to excuse. And to distract himself from the dispute, he bent over Henry and controlled the installed and still running infusion system. He had added a bottle of Ringer to supply Henry with water and minerals to fill up his liquid loss from the torture and the fever.

"Problems. I..I got that! Sally...the young woman...she´s lost?", Henry supposed. He tried to remember when he had seen her the last time. Once she had sit beside his bed when he recovered from the skinning. She was ghost. But she had cared for him. He could remember her soft voice when she talked to Aidan, sharing the time until dawn. There wasn´t much to remind. The morphine had shaded his receptiveness to near zero. Only a voice and a face full of concern...

Henry touched for his shoulder where the needle was inserted. His fingers felt the tape and he moaned softly.

"Is there still pain, Henry?", Josh asked; "I can give you more if there´s need. We have time enough...you should relax and try to sleep. The wounds are healing..."

"No...pain. I´m just so tired..."

"We shot you lot of strong stuff, so it´s no wonder you feel like a mess. Add the blood loss and the fever to it and ya´know what I´m talking about, Henry...", Josh tried to assure him.

"I´m sorry...I couldn´t help you with Aidan...Would have liked to, but..."

"You must not excuse on it. It´s okay, Henry...we are glad we got you out of there...", Josh tried to smile but it didn´t develop like intended. Henry sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. The room around him was fading away, then came back to normal.

"Crap! I´m totally down under...how much blood did I get?"

"Enough to fill up a horse! I nearly robbed the blood bank at Suffolk County!", Josh grinned and padded Henry´s shoulder. Henry stared at him in disbelief and Josh shook his head no. His voice conspiratorial; "Nope! Even I have my connections...", he put his finger over his lips. Lips sealed it meant.

"Oh my God...", Henry moaned.

"It´s okay, Henry...now sleep...You´re safe in here. Relax and sleep...just take your time with it...", Josh whispered, but Aidan heard it too.

Henry closed his eyes and it took him only a few minutes before he was asleep again.

"Don´t look at me this way, Aidan!", Josh grunted.

Henry was barely awake when anybody could call a stoned vampire under morphine be awake…

He felt a hand on his shoulder and it fumbled with his shoulder-neck bow. Warm fingers that pressed onto his skin and a something was sliding out of his skin. He moaned unintentionally , more by surprise than out of pain. When he tried to open his eyes and lurking under half closed eyelids, the world around him started to move in a way that was more than strange. He gasped and closed his eyes to stop the uprising wave of nausea. With much effort he forced it to subside.

His fogged mind reminded the fact that he had gotten blood anywhere and at any time in the past. No good idea to chuck it up now. Henry semiconsciously fought for control but he still felt too weak to do more than lying calm on whatever on was. He sighed and a hand stroked his temple.

"All okay…sleep, Henry…when you wake up it´ll be better…" He couldn´t decipher the voice, only that it was a male one and friendly concerned.

"So…so…dizzy…nausea…", he mumbled weakly.

"Side effects…only side effects. That´ll go soon…" the male voice answered. "What about nausea? I don´t wanna have a half comatose vampire chuck up his special nutrition! Should have get that rug out of the range…" the same voice went on.

"Wo…won´t…chuck…", the last words trailing away and his eyes fell shut finally.

"OMG, he has a total hangover. Looks like he isn´t used to it…", Josh sighed when he watched the now fallen asleep younger vampire.

"Henry isn´t used to it since decades, Josh. But he reacts naturally to the stuff. No abstract and totally new side effects on him. Only the usual kind of shit: Drowsiness, dizziness, disorientation and slight nausea…" Aidan explained.

"Should these facts calm me down, Aidan? You…telling me that…" his voice became more higher pitched, he waved with his hands; "…he´s only reacting normal, suffering from morphine side effects like a human?!" Josh stared at him, he put his arms akimbo and sighed with resignation.

"You´re tired, Josh! When did you sleep through the last time?", Aidan sounded pitiful and he looked at his mortal friend. On his face an expression of true concern.

"Nah, not that thoroughly like you did over the last weeks!", he gave back slightly acid. His eyes started to burn. The last two days started to take its toll on him. His leg hurt and he moaned by himself when he turned abruptly to one side. His leg nearly gave in under him and he felt hands gripping him softly under the elbows, preventing him from falling.

"Finito. Adesso basta, Josh! You are going to bed now and you´ll sleep! That´s no recommendation, it´s a damn order!", Aidan commanded and pushed him to the other side of the bed.

"Don´t try your damn compelling tricks on me, Aidan. I´m werewolf, none of your feeding chicks!", Josh tried to defense himself against the determination of the older vampire.

I´m not compelling you, Josh. No spell. Just I don´t want ending up brushing you up from the carpet with a dustpan!"

"I´m not going to burn down to ashes like you guys!", Josh protested, when Aidan pushed him onto the bedside with slight force. He would have been able to handle him like a little child but he didn´t want to use force or his vampire powers and strength onto him.

Aidan smiled to soften the situation a bit. Josh was all his nerves on the edge. What wonder! He had been through things that even for a werewolf were more than unusual. Searching hectically for his friend and his son to whom the had grown to trust into. Henry had been an unpredictable factor; possible threat as being a vampire, a natural enemy to werewolves even though he had never shown any open hostility to them. And Josh…he had been dependent from him into letting him in, giving him shelter for good when he was more dead than alive. Only out of friendship for Aidan.

Once Henry had been a kindly and caring medic, a soft soul. Being intelligent and with a tendency to be ambitious, he had made his way into the vampire society, charming himself in into the royalty. Call him horny but Henry always had been more in control than Aidan could ever manage. He knew to reign his urges in while being able to fully enjoy his way of feeding, those fitting into the willing donors that were eager for a vampire´s addiction and his power of endurance. Falling in love with the princess, Suren, he had once gone too far by offending her with seemingly tending to another woman out of lust. An offence, a princess would not let unpunished. Her vengeance leading her into a kill that ended up in mass murder- the Halloway massacre. Punished by her mother for exposing the family to mortals, she went backhanding her penalty to Henry when she terribly took her revenge on him by flaying him and by this nearly killing him…

Aidan saw the hint of pain in Josh´s face when he sat on the edge of the bed. For mortals it wasn´t a fast task to heal a deep wound like a gunshot. The bullet had gone deeply into the left thigh, missing the femoral artery by luck, but had damaged a lot of muscle tissue. By this it would take its time until the damage would be repaired completely-

"Your leg…it hurts, doesn´t it? I see it in your face, Josh…", Aidan began when he simply helped his friend to strip down the thick hoody sweater. Josh gave a bitter grin when his muscles started to hurt. A pain by exhaustion, not injury. He simply fell back on the bed, right beside a sleeping vampire and Aidan unceremoniously helped him with the leg, spread a cover over Josh.

"Okay, bunny…sleep well. We all need some rest now…", Aidan smiled and watched over to his son whose breath came regular but low. Henry was sound asleep and, Aidan hoped, not dreaming any nightmares. He crouched into the chair, glad to rest in a sitting position now when he had spent weeks lying in a box.

I didn´t think that I would ever do anything else but lying in that fucking grave. Never believed to ever leave that place of horror to walk upright under the sun or the moon, he thought.

The light in the bedroom was dimmed down to a minimum.

Henry gasped for breath, his limbs were lying outstretched in ankles and with on hand he felt for his shoulder, reminding an infusion set. But it was gone and he remembered hands at his shoulder but had fallen asleep so fast he didn´t know what had happened after it.

After a while he managed it to keep his eyes open and even the surroundings peeled themselves out of the semi darkness that filled the room. He sucked in air through his nose, smelling, tasting for a scent that would tell him, he was safe in here.

Not more being caught in that cellar full of stench, with unbearable pain and the option for a long lasting and excruciating dying process.

It took him some minutes to make clear that he was lying in a bed, beside a man that gave off a distinct scent with a hint of…werewolf. For a mere second he was irritated and shocked, but then it came to his mind that it had to be Josh, the friend of his _father_ Aidan. He relaxed and felt for his limbs.

His wrists were healed, the skin intact, the deep abrasions gone. He sighed, tried to relax a moment and slowly he remembered that anybody had come into the cellar and it had been Atlee together with a man he called Josh. Henry moved his head to the left and looked at Josh who was sleeping.

After a while he managed it to sit up and he gasped when the room started to become foggy. He closed his eyes, his hand moving over the forehead and his eyes and then he opened his eyes again. The fog slowly disappeared and he could make out his surroundings. It took him a while before he could set his feet on the rug beside the bed. His right hand clung for the edge of the nightstand, his left clung to the edge of the bed and he slowly lifted himself from the bed sheets.

He was...thirsty.

Not this thirst for blood, but his mouth was dry and there was a slight taste of the remains of coagulated blood on his tongue. He licked his lips and they felt dry and cracked. Fever. Josh had said anything about fever. That seemed to be ridiculous, but he felt like he had felt a very long time ago when he has had the flu. Drained and weak, unsteady on his legs, dizzy. Henry gasped for breath and made a first step. There had to be water nearby. The bathroom was on the first floor and he wouldn´t have to made it downstairs for the kitchen.

The door of the room wasn´t far away.

Henry sighed when he searched his way through the small room. He had to shun the kitchen table that was still standing in the room and he clung with his left hand to the edge of the table, walking slowly step by step to the door.

How in heaven shall I be able to go out for feeding? The less to convince any unknowingly woman or man to let him drink, he thought. One thing was certain! He was way to weakened to interact with a donor the usual way, getting blood in exchange for sex. His preferred way of feeding.

The door seemed to be miles away instead of feet but finally he gripped the door knob, turned it and opened the door. The slim hall was dark, but he could see enough to find the small red dot in the darkness, that was marking the light switch for the bathroom.

The light in the bath was a bright glare in difference to the darkness in the hall and he shut his eyes in reflex, took a deep breath and made a step forward. The room smelled clean and a slight hint of fresh water made his thirst rising again. He tried to orientate and found the sink to the left. Henry opened the faucet and cool water was running over his hands. He sighed and filled his hands with water, splashed it into his face. The coolness of the water was delicious after the weeks of imprisonment in that damn cellar. There had been water from time to time when Atlee has had pity with him and brought in some water in a pot. It hadn´t been much because he had to be careful not to rise anyone´s suspicion. Mother had allowed blood occasionally. Not the amount Atlee had smuggled blood to provide him with it and to strengthen him.

But it had been less than necessary. The Dutch couldn´t risk to much despite the fact that he had some influence and a higher position among the vampires since Heggeman´s death. But Mother was powerful and to be handled with care.

Henry cupped his hands, bent his head and brought his lips to the bowl of water that his clung fingers made. He drank with pleasure, simply sucking up the cool liquid. Let it ran down his throat. It had been a long time ago since he had drunken this way. Since his childhood he had been warned about drinking free running water because of health aspects. In past times water often had be contaminated with bacteria and drinking from an unknown source could rise severe health problems. But nowadays it was almost safe to drink water from a faucet. Bacteria couldn´t harm him anymore now, since he was turned by Aidan.

Henry swallowed and then he lifted his head again to look into the mirror above the sink. What he saw wasn´t all amazing.

His skin was pale despite the transfusions he had gotten. Around his mouth were dark areas and the skin looked sore where the men who had caught him and tied, had beaten his face with fists. He squinched up his face, felt the sore areas dragging with slight pain and he sighed again. His fingers touched for the skin, felt it to be somewhat raw. He closed his eyes, opened them again and stared at the mirror.

Either the air was steamy and the mirror was steaming up or something...

Suddenly he felt dizzy and his knees felt like made of rubber, walking in thick mud. He grabbed for the edge of the sink when a wave of weakness and nausea swept over him. The room around him became foggy and he felt foggy-brained. Henry gasped, his mouth opened for a shout but all that was coming out was an indefinable gurgle. He turned his head, searching for a help but there was no one other in the bathroom. Gasping he clung to the edge of the sink with both hands, trying to stabilize himself but suddenly the toilet at the other end of the bath shot upwards.

Upwards?

What the heck could a friggin toilet shoot up to the ceiling, he thought. The tiled walls shot upwards too and with a loud thud he fell to the ground. His lights went out.

Darkness swept over him out of the corner of his eyes and he started…that was strange. Real strange thing. He was floating through darkness. Strangely he could register his surroundings consciously. A loud _Bang_ was sounding in regular distances through a large and wasted hall. In between the Bang…Bang he meant to hear voices. Voices. He couldn´t decipher them first but when he concentrated onto them, it seemed that there were cries. Anyone crying like an abandoned child, a baby maybe. Henry tried to listen closer to the whining voice. It went on, then suddenly vanished. For a mere moment it was silent like in a grave. This it must have been when Aidan had been lying in the coffin, grounded, buried alive.

Then suddenly other voices broke out of a far distance. These weren´t cries anymore but screams. Screams of pain, unbearable, excruciating pain.

Henry tried to shed his ears with his hands but it didn´t shut them off, made them the more resonating through his head like a choir full of tortured souls.

A blinding light shot through the darkness and he screamed, closed his eyes to protect his sensitive retinas but it burnt through his closed lids like a laser beam. It was a white glare then suddenly it changed to a spectrum of red and orange like if one is looking into the dancing flames of a fire. With the difference that this light filled the whole space between him and the ground and the ceiling of the large hall.

Fire! It looked like this reddish-orange color that had spread over the whole sky when a city was burning or while the bombing of cities in World War 2. He was floating through the light and his feet went downwards by its own. His arms spread to his sides and it felt like a landing bird, folding its wings and feet grounded. Henry turned his head and looked around. Behind him was nothing but floating darkness that sucked up the reddish glowing. In front of him seemed to be the source of all these disturbing voices. He gasped, felt his lips opening when a wave of warm air swept over him. It smelled…

It smelled like rotten corpses and he could barely prevent himself from chucking up. He choked, pressed his hand over his mouth and nose and his eyes were burning, started to fill with tears from the acid smell. It was growing to a level of stench. With much effort he managed it to keep the blood down which he had been fed with. Nausea made it nearly impossible to breath.

This must be real death! Henry thought.

Choking and disgusted he tried to stare into the wavering red, to make out anything behind the disturbingly painful screams.

Anything was materializing out of the glow. Formed itself like another structure, more made of fog than to be substantial. Slowly he could make out a pair of hands that reached towards him. They looked like they belonged to a woman. A woman he once had seen…at Aidan´s home.

It was…

It was…SALLY.

When her face materialized Henry screamed in shock.

Not the beautiful young face with the long brown curls, the long lashes and the warm shimmering eyes.

Her face was grey and covered by scratches, tainted with blood that was glistening red and way too wet even in the unnatural glowing that filled the hall. Her eyes were white balls, the pupils disappeared , caseous like burned by alkali. Balls that threatened to bulg out of her head. The skin was grey and spread over a skull, shrunken so tight the inner bone structure beneath was extruding.

"Sally?" Henry tried but the Sally-thing stared at him with a devilish grin and when her mouth opened, but what was left over of it, a stream of black fog emanated from the gaping hole. Henry couldn´t make out teeth.

"SALLY! Sally…what had happened to you?", he shouted at her because he felt that a normal voice level wouldn´t reach her through the choir of screams that had risen up with her appearance. By what she looked like he expected her voice to be inhuman, dark, monstrous.

But what came from her was a voice far beyond it.

She sounded, if that would be an explanation, like a male voice but so dark and with a resonating growling that filled the hall. It wasn´t only altered but the sound was like anything from hell. A monstrosity beyond imagination, even for a vampire who was thought to be used to preternatural things. It was so powerful that it hit him like a storm, throwing him backwards and into the wall beside. Henry screamed with pain and fear when the Sally-thing rose into the air and shot directly towards him, stopping dead in her flight and hovering above him.

Henry felt thick thorns that were probing into his bare back and thighs. Hot. Metal. Fire. He screamed from pain and he felt warm liquid soaking from under him. Panic grabbed for his heart that she was going to stake him right now. Now, that he had survived the skinning and the damn hook. He was to die right now if she wouldn´t stop.

"Sally…SALLY ! IT´S…ME!", he shouted with clenched teeth. His back and backside of the thighs seemed to be ablaze with the fire of hot iron. It felt worse than the hook he had hung from.

He closed his eyes unintentionally under the stream of stench that came out of this hole of decay that once had been her beautiful curved mouth with the full red lips.

What was hovering above him was a sheer monstrosity that had nothing in common with the being Sally once had been.

Even a mummy had more beauty and grace.

"GO. AWAY. FROM. ME !", he shouted with much effort. The nausea threatened to overwhelm him now. "IN THE NAME OF GOD ! AND THE SON. AND THE HOLLY SPIRIT !" He reminded words he had learned when he had been a child, at the turn of the century. Before Aidan had made of him what he was now. Since that fatal moment in the military hospital in 1918.

"…I BANISH YOU FROM THE PLACE ! GO BACK WHERE YOU BELONG TO! TO THE PITS OF HELL!", he shouted at her.

The Sally-thing screamed. A high pitched voice that turned over to a deep growling. The words were undecipherable. She barked and growled like a raging monster or the thing that was her or worse; inside her. Her eyes bulged and shot glares of fire like light and her voice was so loud it threatened to make his ears explode and let the walls shake like in an immense earthquake. The reddish glowing became liquid, wavering, wrapping itself around her and him before she shot backwards, her face a mask of hatred and wrath.

Henry turned his face from her, not able to stand the sight any longer that was her. Had been her once and now…

He screamed with fear and she disappeared into the wall of liquid light.

For the split of a last second he saw something that was Sally. A face so tortured, so full of pain. A mere second her voice became human when she screamed under an excruciating pain:

"HEN….RYYYY….HELPPPPPP….MEEEEE. "

Than she was gone.

The light turned black. The pain in his back remained and somebody called him by his name. He felt his head to be lifted by warm hands and fingers touched over his throat.

"Henry!?"

It wasn´t Sally´s voice.

A voice familiar to him, concerned and a little bit annoyed. He gasped and forced his eyes open. Blinding light in difference to the darkness around him pierced into his eyes and he moaned softly.

Josh was sound asleep.

A loud thud pulled him bolt upright. He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. The noise had come from outside the room and Josh thought about what it meant. His heart was beating fast with surprise and he caught his breath. With useless eyes he stared onto the bed beside him. Felt with the right hand for the covers.

The bed beside his was empty.

What the heck?

Josh climbed out of the bed and staggered through the darkness. His hand found the light switch and the lamp under the ceiling switched on with a bright glare.

The room was empty but for Aidan who was sleeping deeply in his chair.

Josh hurried out of the room and searched his way through the upper floor hall. A slim line of light came out under the bathroom door and Josh opened the door.

What he saw made him grunting.

Henry was lying under the sink in a puddle of water. The faucet was still running and under Henry he saw bits of broken glass glistening under him.

"Crap! Had he to go out alone? Stupid vampire!", he cursed when he bent down to Henry and shoved his hand under Henry´s neck, lifting his head a bit. With the other hand he felt for the pulse point at the throat. Steady but weak. He felt for the forehead. Cool and moist. No fever again. Thank God.

"Henry?!...HENRY!", he tried.

A soft moaning came out of Henry´s lips and Josh grinned when the eyelids fluttered. Blue eyes opened and stared into his face. There was a slight hint of disbelief in the face of the younger vampire.

"What...what...happened?" Henry moaned when he tried to move. The fog in front of his eyes disappeared slowly and he took a deep breath of relief.

"Don´t move, Henry! I really don´t want to peel that friggin´ bits of glass out of your vampire ass of yours! Not after I got that hook out." Josh cursed.

"It´s not...my fault..Josh..." Henry moaned. "I just wanted..."

"You just wanted to see if baby vamp can run on its own legs!", Josh gave back acidly when he brought out a hand-broom and a dustpan and came back to the sink.

"I´m no...baby vamp!" Henry sounded pissed off.

"Quite you are, Henry! You´re so much younger than Aidan!

"But no babe!"

"Related to a some 250 years old vampire you are! When do you vampires got dry behind the ears? Fifty? A hundred years?", Josh grinned at him.

"How did you end up with all this mess, Henry? What happened?", Josh asked when he carefully brushed up the glass splinters.

"Don´t know…exactly…I…I felt weak, dizzy suddenly and then…" he began.

"Uh ha! And that was the moment you decided to faint and take that glass with you…", Josh grunted when he tried to pick up larger parts of glass with his fingertips in an attempt not to cut the skin.

"Yeap! Same stuff as usual! The patient isn´t patient and walks around before asking the doctor for it!" Josh stared at the vampire who tried to rise from the ground. "Ever got any clue why the word patient has anything to do with being patient?"

"I…I was…thirsty and…", Henry began in an attempt to excuse the mess he had made.

"Simply could have woken me up and asking for water!" Josh put the dust pan onto the ground and shook his head in disbelief.

"Aidan told me that you had been a medic yourself. So you should have known the side effects of morphine by yourself! Did you guess how much of it I had to shoot you? Just in case to keep you down and prevent me from being bitten by you, Henry…?"

"Being bitten? I didn´t bite…anyone around here!", Henry protested.

"Cause that stuff nailed you down to the table and the bed!...", Josh sighed. "Looks like you´re reminding less of it. That´s to be excused but you were definitely out of the track when we put you on the table…Aidan had to keep you down for good! With this damn holes in your body you fought like a caught animal…never seen before such a panic stricken vampire… And I´m used to some…"

"I´m so sorry…I made you all this trouble…I…hm…I was…" Josh saw how difficult it was for Henry to confess to his own weakness. Vampires should be strong and tough. Not weak.

"It doesn´t matter now. You had been seriously hurt and if I had been in the same condition…dear God…I don´t know what I would have started…"

Henry nodded slowly and Josh helped him to rise from the ground. He inspected Henry´s backside for splinters. One or two had pierced the skin and were to be pulled off.

"Should get that off the skin. I think it hurts…damn glass…!", Josh looked closer and took a pair of tweezers from the closet. Henry touched with one hand for his back and Josh shoved his fingers aside.

"Keep off!" he ordered and withdrew the parts of glass. A little bit of blood dripped from the tiny holes and when Josh wiped it off, the wounds started to close.

"That works…" Healing should do, now that Henry had gotten enough blood and liquid supplement.

"I …I…have seen…Sally!

It came all of a sudden for Josh.

"Sally?...You have seen her for sure when Aidan brought you in the first time…" Sally had been in the living room, like him, when Aidan came in with a terribly bleeding and suffering Henry. After the skinning.

"No. Now." Henry shook his head in protest.

"NOW?...Tell me…I don´t know if I got that right! You mean…_right now_?", Josh´s voice dripped with disbelief, his brows knitted and he looked at Henry with concern. Maybe Henry was suffering from after effects of the morphine. Bad dreams or something like that, he thought. Morphine could cause hallucinations, lack of time and disorientation. And Henry had gotten a pretty lot of the stuff over the last days.

"Now, Josh…I…fainted…but seemed somewhat be …awake or at least something equal like that. I…", Henry tried to describe what he had seen a few minutes ago; " I was in a large room or hall…there was darkness behind me, but light in front of me. It was…glowing red like…like a crimson sky when a city is burning…there had been voices…terrible voices. A baby crying first…then terrible screams like people suffering…She was…" Henry grabbed for a small seat beside the shower cabin and sat down when he felt his legs grow uncertain. He gasped and went on, tried to bring a line into the terrifying pictures. Josh looked at him with deep concern.

"Sally…she came…out of the fog…red like the whole light around. She…she wasn´t like…I had seen her the first time…Josh! She looked terrible. Strange. Her skin grey and her facial bones protruding under it. Her face…she looked like a shrunken mummy…she…" The most terrifying sight of all was the lack of normal eyes.

"Her eyes…blind like burnt by caustics…there were no pupils…she screamed at me…attacked me and I fell into the wall behind…" Henry caught his breath for a moment, then he went on as fast as possible like to get rid of what had to be told. "She was…I think, it wasn´t her anymore. Her normal she… I´m so sorry, but she looked like some monster out of hell. I´ve never seen something like this before. I´ve seen her as a ghost. But it wasn´t her anymore. Looked like a monster ghost! Anything worse must have happened to her, Josh! I´m sure of it! She…sally or what is left over of her is in a terrible situation! Pure despair! She…I warded her off by an old prayer. She attacked me and I didn´t know how to help me off it! I´m sorry, if I did something wrong but she went right for my body…as if to kill me, Josh!"

Josh stared at him and Henry saw how his hands start to tremble when he grabbed for a hold. Josh seemed to be shaken to the base by it.

"Could…could you identify something…a place…or area where she was? Where all this happened? Could you see where you were, Henry? Anything familiar anyway to you?" Josh sounded desperate in his attempt to find out what it all meant.

"No. It was totally strange for me… I only felt fear and despair and pain from others all over. When I warded her off or back or…anyway. She screamed and for a mere second she seemed to become her old self and she screamed for me for help! That was all how it ended. Then she was gone. To wherever it was to be her place there…"

"That´s all so…hellish! Sally being this…_thing_! The way you described her look. Like…like she was in any place far worse than death…Oh my God!" Josh grabbed for his forehead, let himself sink onto the edge of the bath tub.

_tbc_


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter 7_

Sally shot forward, driven by a force that wasn´t her own. The less by her own will. Her body shape felt no more material, even not ghostly, but anything was inhabiting her barely human shape. It was cold, cold down to icy, strange, dark beyond imagination and …

…evil

Where once had been her mortal heart, the seat of her soul, was anything raging within her with a heat like the fires of hell. She was surrounded by a blinding light and for a mere moment she thought it to be the light she once had seen when the door, her door, opened in front of her but she hadn´t taken it then. Had wanted to stay with her friends, not even sure if she wasn´t going to use somebody else´s door. A door which was not meant for her. Slowly she became aware that she was surrounded by a large halo of wavering red light that was hot beyond imagination. The halo was with her wherever she moved, despite the fact that she tried to speed up to escape this unholy glowing. But the red heat was following her and slowly she became aware that she herself was the one from whom the light came. It descended from her chest, her body, the core where once her soul had resided.

Sally or what seemed to be left over from her felt acting like a foreign, a strange something, had taken over her shape, Had taken possession from her ghostly shape.

Could a ghost be possessed by another entity? Another anything, if not sheer force that was out of her control. She had heard of humans being possessed by an evil force or ghost, but never ever of a ghost being this.

Anything immense forceful was…using…her shape and drove it forward. She stared onto her hands. The skin, once flawless and soft and cared, was wrinkled and grey. It looked dry, with faults and rifts and was spreading over the pure structure of her bones.

She could stare through the red heat like through a red fog and in some distance a body was whirling into her sight. The Sally-thing couldn't define who it was. But suddenly she felt herself lifted from the ground, if ever there was any, and she shot forward towards the anybody.

She was flying.

She once had done this flying at home, downwards the stairs like when Danny had pushed her down the stairs in an attempt to really hurt her. When she had fallen head over heels over head and finally she had ended up with her neck broken, the back of her head split and swimming in a pool of her own blood. The fall so forceful it had split the old ornamental tiles at the base of the stairhead. As a ghost she had hovered down the stairs, a slow-motion repetition of the murder, like to feel every move, every moment of it again. Slowly enough to become conscious of what had happened really to her; that she was killed by will, not an accident like Danny ever told everybody who wanted to know. Murder in the first degree. The house had made it possible or had it been herself: The opportunity to savor it to the full.

The Sally-thing tried to steer her movement, the hovering, the speed flight that brought her nearer to the newcomer. His shape became much clearer and for a short moment she recognized him:

It was Henry!

Henry. The vampire she had seen at home when he came in after another vampire tried to kill him. Had seen him recover from the mortal wounding. Had seen him living upstairs silently in a small room Josh had shared to him. She could see fear and confusion in his face and she wanted to feel pity for him but the very moment she wanted it, she felt something terrible forceful taking possession of her mind and all that was left was hatred and wrath.

A glowing hatred that filled her whole entity and she spat a stream of force against him, made him whirling, sending him crashing into the wall beside him. She laughed and shot forward until she was hovering above him. The wrinkled shape of the vampire, trembling, his heart beating with fear, pounding in her hearing like the drums of a tempest. She laughed and shot down onto him, not aware she was able to make use of her shape like of a body of immense weight.

She saw him outstretched on the ground that was so uneven, so unsteady like the whole surroundings but hard enough to hurt him. She was hovering over him like an insect, ready to shot its mandibles into its victim. The lips of the vampire moved but she couldn´t hear the words which came out of his mouth. His fangs were bared and his eyes bled black like the pits of hell. She laughed.

A roaring laugh. Not like a woman, not like Sally. But like anything from inside. Inhuman, fear rising, terrifying and with such monstrous enjoyment that even that heap of shit of a vampire was panic-stricken. The Sally-thing dove deeper until her face was only mere millimeters away from him. She sent a stream of power into him and laughed again when he screamed with pain. A dark lust filled her whole entity and whatever she was, it hungered for the kill. Kill him! Kill him! Her inner voice commanded and she felt such a dark desire to smash his human shape into bits of flesh and blood which would cover the walls and the ground with the hot red pool of his immortality. Licking it up and absorbing his life force to rise and strengthen.

Dark power was whirling inside her, breaking to the surface in a black stream. The Henry-thing screamed and her power was growing, fed by her desire and her murderous lust. She let it free and it shot towards him, nailing him to the ground and spearing him with a thousand knifes.

Sally stared. Her inner self, with disgust and horror, she stared at what was happening in front of her. She tried to scream but the IT within her was beating her down and beside like a useless shade. Helplessly she witnessed how the IT readied to struck the vampire. She tried to scream NO! NO! NO! But no sound came out of her mouth irrespective how hard she fought to gain the upper hand.

She wasn´t her anymore.

Merely a shade of her old shape, wrinkled, turned and wrenched to an anything, an IT.

Her old self wanted to stop the IT, wanted to save the vampire from IT. To stop the IT and save the man, the vampire she once had known.

But it was so useless like if she would try to stop the universe from exploding.

She fought with her hands, her arms and legs to bring the IT in herself away from the body beneath. Her arms and legs waving like those of a swimmer in the stormy sea but she couldn´t bring herself away from him. Helplessly caught in the power of the IT that had taken over her shape as an instrument of hellish force.

"GO. AWAY. FROM. ME ! IN THE NAME OF GOD ! AND THE SON. AND THE HOLY SPIRIT! "…I BANISH YOU FROM THE PLACE ! GO BACK WHERE YOU BELONG TO! TO THE PITS OF HELL!"

The words hit her with full force. Even stronger than the power which drove her forward. The words hit with full force the IT within her and Sally felt how these holy words, parts of the exorcism of the roman catholic church, fought with the hellish power that inhabited her shape. The words drove through her shape, through her inner core and the whirling power like the swords of an archangel. They burned like fire, streaming, whirling, extinguishing like a waterfall will extinguish a wild fire. The Sally-thing felt split, dissolved into nothing by the sheer power of the words. Like Danny had once tried in her home to exorcize her, to ward her off the house with the help of a medium he had hired.

Sally whirled back, but it wasn´t her who go smashed into the wall of glowing red light.

It was the IT within her that was warded off, was shot backwards by the power of the higher God. She felt how she whirled backwards but the power didn´t hit herself but the IT inside her. She was only an instrument IT used and by this she was totally helpless, only part of the whole.

For a mere second she felt the IT power fell away from her. A mere second only. But it was long like eternity, long enough to bring her back into herself for the split of a second.

This split that enabled her to shine through and to address herself to the vampire with a scream of sheer force;

"HEN….RYYYY….HELPPPPPP….MEEEEE. "

Then it was over. She was sucked up into the red glowing light, back into the depths of hell. She screamed but the raging power of IT wrenched her screams from her throat and all disappeared.

She was lost.

_Through the clouds is breaking a pale light... Fog is rising out of empty lairs. Gone voices are singing in a choir. A whisper goes through the night. Secret message. He´s awakened..._

_Open the window a voice calls within me. You! My master! Come! I´m waiting for you._

_And then you´re standing there._

_Pale is your face, but you´re the force that silently reins. And I´m feeling the illusion of your tenderness, when your strong kiss takes my senses away. Now I´m yours!_

_The wind is whispering out of darkened forests, through the clouds is breaking a pale light... Out of our lair rises fog. Gone voices are singing in a choir..._

"Who the freak had turned on that damn radio in the kitchen?" Josh barked when suddenly a song vibrated through the house. A voice was singing a song from the seventies, a ghostly and the more vampire related content when Josh listened closer. He rose from the bath tub edge and went for the door knob when suddenly the voice broke the same way like it had come.

"It´s her..." Henry whispered weakly.

"Don´t make me! That damn radio goes mad since a few days...nothing else..." Josh tried to wipe away the idea that threatened to drive him mad.

"But what if she tries to communicate with us this way? If it´s Sally?!" Henry insisted.

"Not by the radio! Henry! What an idea! Sally...she´s anywhere but she´s definitely not an alien from outer space, communicating via radio telescope!" Josh stared at him like Henry was mad. He shook his head no and turned the doorknob.

"Will you make it to the room for yourself?" he asked Henry finally, reminding that he had found a half unconscious Henry in the bathroom.

"It´s okay...go, if you need..." he smiled weakly.

Josh nodded absently and left the bathroom. Henry watched him walking down the hall to the stairs that lead downstairs to the kitchen and the living room. The man/werewolf looked disturbed. The loss of Sally seemed to take its toll on him but Henry didn´t know how to help the man who had given him shelter against all odds. He wasn´t used to handle ghosts. Had lived over a period of some eighty years hiding from everyone. Feeding from time to time from women or men he had manipulated to get to blood. It had been dangerous and he had to stay out of Boston for a very long time until he dared to return into the city coming close to the orphans.

Josh went down the stairs hastily, ran for the radio and turned the knobs over the whole range of frequencies. He listened intensely. But nothing happened. Only the radio channels with music or babbling moderators. Regardless of which frequency he tried, there was nothing. Unnerved he gave up, beating his palm on the radio. The box gave a cracking sound, that was all.

Josh walked around the living room, his teeth gritted, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. His fingers came close to his cell and he fumbled nervously until he managed to pull it out. With shaking fingers he clicked over the numbers, dialed Zoe´s number out of his mind. He pressed the cell to his ear, chewing on his lower lip, waiting for an answer.

It was weird, was mad, what he was going to do. The same like going together with the Dutch in order to get Aidan and his son free. He felt the rising pain in his leg and pressed his free hand on his left thigh where the bullet had hit him. This wound was healing but he lacked of the healing capabilities Aidan had. Damn. He had to go on! When they would have Sally back he would be able to take his time for healing. While he was waiting for Zoe to answer, he shuddered by the thought of the fact that Full Moon wasn´t that far away! Only a few nights ahead. His leg wasn´t fully healed yet and a werewolf with a handicapped leg...

Seconds seemed to stretch into an eternity. Then he heard a click from the other side and Zoe answered his call.

"It´s me. Josh! I´m sorry and I hope I don´t disturb you during shift, Zoe...", he began carefully. He knew all too well that he had to ask for good weather when it came to Sally. Zoe had given her help to Atlee for getting in into his home unharmed. She had spoken of some kind of magic. But to bring a vampire in was something different than to get a ghost out of the pits of hell.

"What do you want, Josh? Did you get your friends back? After I gave in to make an invitation for an undead by magic? You know how scary this is! I´m not intended to use more magic on behalf of your friends! I´m not going to sell my soul to the pits of hell!", she grunted before Josh could go on, the less explain what happened. He sighed, trying to hide it from her. But she heard it anyway. Josh could imagine in front of his inner eye how upset she would be if he was going to bring the theme onto Sally but he had no choice.

"Uhm... Zoe...I´m very thankful to you...We managed it to get Aidan and his son back...uhm...but...but there had come up another problem while he had been missed...", he began, sinking onto the large couch. He felt the softness and steadiness of the upholstery under his butt. He leaned one arm on the seat back, his fingers clinging to the material for a fixing into reality.

"Zoe...I don´t know if you can be of some help for me..."

"When it comes to your shot leg, ask a doctor! Otherwise I can only recommend bathes with chamomile!", she answered shortly. Josh remembered the strong scent of seemingly tons of chamomile tea upstairs in his fathers house, when a poisoned Aidan had taken a bath, turning the old style tub in an oversized pot of tea. Using all the tea at once the household could offer. The memory of it was able to conjure a smile onto his face for a second, then he became earnest again.

"I´m not asking for recommendations for phytotherapy. Thanks!", he grunted a bit angrily, then bit his lip to stop himself from ruining his little chance by annoying her. "Thanks, my leg is a bit better since I left hospital even when I overexerted it a bit the last two nights...but I´ll be fine, Zoe. Thanks...", he tried to fly low under the radar, avoiding it carefully to go like a bull at the gate.

But Zoe seemed to smell what was in the oven.

"What do you really want from me? For sure you´re not expecting any wishes for a recovery. So tell me what you want Josh or I´ll grow impatient what tends to lead me to hang up! My time is shortly measured!"

"Gee...hm, you know that...Uhm, I don´t want to raise your anger, Zoe..." Josh felt like a cat on a hot steel roof.

"You´re rising my anger if you don´t come along soon!", she warned him. "I´m amidst shift! So!" she sounded near to a growling.

"Okay..." he breathed once, twice. His fingers went through his short hair and he nodded to an invisible Zoe, tried to steady his voice. More than pulling his head off she couldn´t do. But stop! Shoot him with a silver bullet

Nonsense! That was pretty nonsense. Ray had shot him with a normal bullet. Otherwise the doctors would have started the round dance, talking around they removed a silver projectile from a nurse´s leg!

Calm down! He urged himself. His thoughts were going head over heels and this was pretty damn bad! Let not your OCD go haywire!

"Can we talk Sally, Zoe?"

"What do you want me to talk about Sally?"

"So you don´t know?" Josh barely could believe it that Zoe, as a medium didn´t hear from Sally´s fate. Even by other ghosts. "I thought anybody told you! Any of the ghosts you meet from time to time..."

"If you refer to the ward! This portal was crashed with Sally going mad and destroying all! And if you want to hear it, Josh or if you don´t want to! With this my special ward is gone and I don´t make up a new one! I had been involved in what one may call a soul recycling! I call it a transfer, but with letting her the Reaper taking possession of her, the door is closed! I don´t do anymore and so I don´t have the slightest clue what happened to your Sally! And to be honest, Josh, she´s not my first interest now!"

Her words hit him like beats in the face. From this side it was barely possible to get much, the less any help. Not the way like she sounded. Zoe seemed to be very angry with Sally for what had happened on her neonatal ward. Whatever she had done there; recycling, rebirth or what else...I must have been of immense importance to her. A task she had to fulfill.

"Okay. Zoe...", Josh had to control himself for not breaking out in tears. His nerves were on the edge since Atlee had come into his hospital room and he had learned to know what had happened to his disappeared friend Aidan. Who he should use to find help? He heard Zoe breathing on the other end of the line.

Josh took all his bravery together. He took a deep breath and asked her one last question;

"If you don´t want to help us yourself...is there anybody out there who will do? Give me a hint at least, Zoe! Please! For Heavens Sake!"

He heard nothing for a moment and his hope fell like the last drops of rain in a dried out river. Seconds went, stretching into an eternity. He heard her breathing.

Then she answered. Her voice bare of any emotion. Simply tired. Like being tired of doing always the same thing over and over again.

"Ask for Donna! She runs a soup kitchen in downtown Boston."

Josh looked at his cell, his face torn, his brows knitted. He didn´t know what to make of it.

"Who´s this Donna...?" He sounded hesitating. His mind went in circles when he tried to figure out what he should think of this.

"Donna should know. She will be the one who you´re searching for when you have something like magic in mind...", Zoe shortly answered. She stared at her cell, her lips torn to a slim line.

"Where...where do I find her? You..you have brought ghosts back into...into bodies...what can she do what you can´t, Zoe?" Josh had seen her with ghosts who disappeared or dissolved into the bodies of small babies. He didn´t understand how she managed it, but she seemingly was capable of something special. He had put all his hope into her to get Sally back. And now?

Now she was going to ward him off for another person he had never heard of.

Josh twitched and shuddered, his heartbeat speeding up, turned around abruptly when suddenly a hand touched his shoulder. Finding himself face to face with Henry who pulled back one or two steps. The expression in his face was guilt.

"Damn! Never do that again! You nearly shocked me to death with your vampire skills. Are you gonna haunting me now additionally to what hangs on my neck?" Josh growled.

"Sorry, I didn´t want to scare you..." Henry whispered weakly. His face was paler than normal. Still suffering from the weeks long torture. Slight bruises surrounded his mouth, healing but not totally gone. Atlee had told him that the vampires had roughed him up very badly when they had caught him in the woods.

"Then...", Josh put his hand over the cell to keep Zoe off the talk. "...what do you want...?", he went on angrily. His heart was still beating fast despite the fact that he tried to calm down himself very hard.

"I...I wanted to ask you...if I can be of...any...help." Henry voice holding a hint of helplessness. And he didn´t try to hide it. This showed Josh how much Aidan´s son trusted him, holding back nothing. Showing a touch of weakness and vulnerability that normally a vampire would never dare to show in the vicinity of a human. But Josh had seen him at his worst twice. And the man/werewolf had come for him to free him. He could have gone to Aidan´s rescue, not caring about his son. Not caring about a vampire who had brought his patience to the edge, coping with the fact that two cases of death had occurred in context with the first time healing process. Hadn´t it been for Josh, Aidan would have had massive problems to find shelter for his son who hadn´t been far from dying.

Henry was very conscious of the fact that he owed his rescue only to the man who had made friends with a vampire. And for those had been condemned by the other vampires who watched him with despise, with hatred.

Now it was on him to pay back a little bit of what he had gotten. If he could.

Josh clearly read it in the face of the younger vampire. This intelligent, cocksure and ambitious young undead. Young in relation to Aidan or any of the other vampires who were holding a higher position among Boston Family. Who had been so mad and at the same time so desperate to come back into his _father´s_ range that he nearly had thrown away his life for it. To be skinned alive was even for a vampire a death threat. And Josh reminded the shock when he had seen Henry on the threshold, disbelieving that such thing like this was still possible nowadays. He had heard of terrible death sentences in the past; antique, medieval ages, the witch hunts in 16th and 17th century...but now... Had hold back his horror, hiding it behind his spitting, venomous question "Did you make him without skin?"

He had seen victims of terrible accidents. Patients burnt in fire accidents, barely surviving a state of sixty, seventy percent of burnt skin. Had smelled the stench of fourth degree burnt flesh that had come with them. A smell you once have smelled you`ll never forget.

But with Henry on the threshold there had come in such an intense smell of blood; a cloud of blood that had hung in the air around him like from the pools of blood in a slaughterhouse. He knew the scent from the Boston Suffolk ER but here it had hit him with full force. He had meant to smell it in the house still days after Henry had healed despite the fact that Aidan had gotten rid of all remains of all materials. And the dead girls.

"What. Do. You. Think. You can help me with?" Josh grunted, pulling the cell away from his face.

"The woman there...she...she told you...to look for...Donna...", it came hesitatingly from Henry´s side.

Josh stared at him. In disbelief.

"Don´t tell me you bastard of a vamp´s son had heard all I had spoken. I was damn friggin´ alone in the room until you came in and nearly shocked me into a damn heart attack!"

"I tried to get your attention but you had been so constricted into your banter with this woman that you even didn´t notice I came in. I´m sorry Josh...I didn´t meant to harm you or your heart..." Henry smiled weakly. "I heard you..."

"Stop! Stop that!" Josh gasped. Suddenly he heard a click from the other end of the line when Zoe simply hung up with no further word. Nor a Good Bye. "Now she had hung up! Damn it! How in the world of the living and the dead shall I be gonna know where this friggin´ Donna lives or holds residence! Damn you, Zoe! You not only kicked my sore ass with enjoyment for what Sally may have done to you: It hadn´t been me! And then you make your damn exit without so much as a word where I shall find this Donna so and so. Only..." Josh waved his hand with the cell theatrically in a fake of making a bow; "...to search damn whole Boston for her. I even don´t know what she looks like, the less where she´s running her goddamn soup kitchen..." His voice snapped from cynicism to sheer hysteria. The words gurgling out like overrunning themselves. So much that Henry started to fear for Josh´s mental health.

Josh stared in disbelief at his cell that blinked innocently with a red spot, showing that the line was disconnected.

"Josh...? Josh...!" Henry´s voice was low, calm and soft when he tried to address an overly excited Josh. He tried to catch his glance in an attempt to connect him to the contemporary and real world around him. "Josh! Please...easy...easy..." His words came slowly and thoughtful. Don´t scare him again, he thought. He made two steps nearer to the excited man, his hands rising and moving nearer to him.

"Josh!"

Very carefully he put his hands on the shoulders in front of him, his head bent a bit to look directly into the eyes of the man opposite of him. Josh twitched and tensed despite the fact that Henry didn´t put force into his grip. He twitched so abruptly that Henry shoved his hands under the armpits ready to catch him would he falter.

"Josh...calm down please...", he begged softly.

"While the hell shall I calm down? I have all reason in the world to be angry. More than angry! This Zoe kicked my ass for what Sally had done! All the time all sticks to me like cow poo. Even the shit I didn´t have to answer for!" He tried to turn away but Henry didn´t let him go. Not now. His voice became much darker, more low, getting a timbre that was totally unfamiliar for Josh. A voice which Henry normally used when it came to influence, to compel a victim or a blood donor he attempted to drink from. For sure Josh wasn´t used to it, the less able to resist it by will. One hand under the right armpit of Josh, the other one carefully rising for the temple, he put his right hand softly at the side of Josh´s head.

"Look into my eyes..." he softly commanded.

He felt Josh tremble but the buck eyes, like Aidan called them, rose and he caught his view. Henry smiled slightly to relax the situation.

"You don´t have to worry, Josh. The less to lose your track. This Zoe didn´t give you so much of an information. That´s not fair quite sure. But I can help you Josh! Don´t worry!...", Henry waited for his words to work onto Josh. He didn´t intend to bring him under his vampire spell, simply wanted to calm him down so he could talk to him normally. He had begun to like this man whom he owed so much. Josh was honest, stern and trustworthy. The man his maker, his father, Aidan, trusted to he wouldn´t mistrust. He had learned to differ surely between the humans. His sensitive vampire senses and his fine tuned power of observation together with his life experience told him whom to trust to and whom not to trust.

And Aidan´s friend was near panic now when he was mad with fear for Sally and this Zoe had hung a piece of dripping bloody meat from a hook, dangling in front of his racing heart and then she had pulled it away when he had jumped for it.

"What? What?...What are you trying not to tell me?", Josh mumbled absently when the strange but comforting voice was humming in his ears, resonating in his mind. It felt strange but strangely good on the other side. He lifted his view, only to find himself caught in the deep black pools of Henry´s eyes. A hand carefully stroked his temple. Normally he would have shaken it off but now he didn´t.

"Listen, Josh...I...I know this Donna! I know her..." he softly insisted, waiting for Josh to react to his words. It took the words a moment to reach his panic shaded mind finally Josh understood what Henry was trying to tell him.

"You...you know her? I mean...you..." he stuttered and felt ashamed at the same time. Damn, he was an adult man, not an overly nervous teeny. He gasped and swallowed hard just to win time before he went on.

He looked at Henry who held him tight and safe.

"Yes, I know Donna and I know where she runs her soup kitchen in Downtown Boston." he said calmly.

"Where from do you know her and where her business is...?" Josh brought out in a very low voice, barely able to hide the tremble in it.

"It´s rather a small soup kitchen...nothing like the one from the social care service in southern Boston. Donna does make meals for some thirty, fifty people... I know which place it is. I can bring you to her..."

"But...but...you didn´t...eat. I mean. Soup..." Josh uttered. Henry smiled slightly, sighed and his voice became thoughtful.

"When I was with the orphans...I had to search my...fill...among the homeless, the people hanging out anywhere. It´s hard to get to blood this way. I don´t want to kill...I always prevented to kill when it was possible. In the past when I had access to the family´s sources I fed on willing women and men..." he began.

"That means you´re gonna...play with your meals...ain´t you?" Josh stared at him, his face torn.

"Kind of. Call it what you will. I call it feeding in exchange. Beside: blood tastes better in the thralls of passion. Besides being a vampire..." Henry grinned a bit when he went on; " I´m a full functional man!"

"Of this fact I have no doubt!", Josh shot back. He was thinking that over and over again. What Henry had told to him. "You...you fed on the homeless...? They…they would have no chance against you guys...that´s not fair!", he replied with a hint of annoyance. Stared at Henry, but couldn´t bring himself to a point where he would blame Henry for what he did. With shame he became aware that his inner sense of judgment and his conscience had been corrupted by living with a vampire. Being himself a werewolf he felt having no right to convict any of them for their way of ...feeding.

Josh gasped and bent his head to get his view out of the range of Henry, but the hands around his shoulders remained. He felt Henry´s breath feathering over his face. Soft and cool. More calm as it had been when Henry was sleeping into healing after Josh had cared for his terrible wounds in the upper chest.

Josh tried to reign in his thoughts, to think more clearly now. He gasped again. Eventually he mumbled:

"You would bring me to her, Henry?"

"Yes! I will show you the place and you can talk to her. She´s there the evening and the whole night. She´s a kind woman and very cooperative...", Henry explained.

"But...uhm, you know her personally...? But does she know, I mean...does she know what you´re doing around her? I mean...if homeless disappeared from her shelter..."

"I didn´t kill any of them. I kept around the area but I have nothing to do with any mysterious cases of death if there are any among them...", he tried to defense himself.

"I don´t accuse you for the death cases which occurred there over the time, Henry...", Josh tried to set the things right in the hospital some of the homeless and unfortunate had told stories about the mysterious disappearing of some of their acquaintances. Few meant to have seen a tall man who was lurking in the dark. But the nurses hadn´t believed them because who believes a man hanging out under bridges, in parks and drinking alcohol? The usual, alcohol shaded Bla bla of peeps whose minds were half poisoned.

_Soulmates to be out into darkness..._

"Maybe we should go to her as fast as possible...", Henry suggested with a slight smile.

"Kay...Do you feel strong enough for a little travel? I mean...I picked you up recently from the bathroom tiles...", Josh reminded him of what had happened seemingly a few minutes ago.

"It´s okay...I feel better thanks to your nurse qualities, Josh..." Henry sat himself onto the edge of a chair nearby. Josh shot him a view, grabbed a hoodie sweater and reached it to him.

"I think you may have use for it, Henry. You can take one of the jeans from the closet and a pair of booties. Looks like...", Josh directed to the old ruined booties Henry had worn when they caught him in the woods; "...those are ready for the garbage can...unless you want to shock the neighbors with blood stained boots. I won´t recommend this..." Josh grinned a bit and Henry felt him relax a bit at least. Josh´s heart rate had come down, even not to normal but much slower than before when he had feared for his health.

Henry thought about how much stronger werewolves were related to humans, but couldn´t get himself to come to a result about this question. He decided not to push onto this question until Josh would bring up the theme by himself. Or they were going into a situation where he would find it out.

When Henry was dressed finally Josh took him down to his car in the slim court beside the house.

He opened the door and bent into the car to the backseat where a lot of materials were still lying. An old blanket and empty bottles of mineral water and a plastic bag. Josh dug through the bag and found used infusion sets and empty bags of blood. With disgust he looked at the few remaining droplets of blood that had gotten brown over the time. He grinned and stuffed them back into the bag, turned his face only to see Henry´s disgusted face.

"What´s up, Henry? Are you afraid of blood?"

"I´m not afraid of it, but old and half rotten blood never looks and scents well."

Josh usually kept his car clean but transporting a semi comatose and halfway dead vampire and another one who recently escaped the fate to be fed to any weird fight...by a fierce vampire hunter named McLean. Father of Brynn and Connor. Josh felt a cold shudder creeping up his spine and he twitched, banished the thought from his mind. They had other things to do.

When Josh had cleaned up a bit at least, he took the driver seat and bent sideward, opening the door to the passenger seat. Henry slipped in, looked through the windshield, then turned his head backward, looking down the street where in the dim light of a street lamp on the other side the thin layer of sleet was glistening in a pale glowing orange. By instinct he sucked in the air for enemies but there was nobody down the street but a grey cat that hurried through the cold impatiently to get home into a warm house. Henry smiled when Josh looked at him with knitted brows.

"All okay, only a cat! No other vampires…"

"Are you still afraid of them?"

"But of cause. Call it to be very careful. You shouldn´t forget that it hadn´t been any of my kind nor Mother who had set us free. We are still fugitives and should hide from them under all circumstances…", Henry warned him.

"But…I mean…all you had gone through…! The…" Josh swallowed hard on the thought of the word skinning; "You have…paid with your skin to come back into this bunch…"

"Yeap, but with helping Aidan to get to Mother´s lair…I have thrown it all away. She wanted to kill me for helping him. Other than Aidan who should suffer for decades for his attempt of regicide! She never would forgive! She wants me dead and as long as she´s alive, she will not stop to hunt me down!"

"That means…the only way to stop her…"

"…Is to kill her!", Henry completed the words.

"Then there will be two who are on the top ten list to be killed…", Josh mumbled.

"Who do you refer to? Atlee is out of the range…not even the most cunning, but he´s quite okay. Acceptable to say.", Henry stared at Josh from the side while they drove out of the narrow court yard.

"Oh my God! I didn´t mean Atlee. He´s okay, as you say. Helped me to get both of you out of the imprisonment. Mother must go! And McLean!"

"McLean! Is this the man I have seen while I had been on a drip in here…?" With his thumb he directed to the back seat.

"Looks like. What you told me of the man comes along with what Aidan has told when he was caught in that damned cage in the truck…Seems to be the same man with a certainty of some 99 percent…"

Henry made a half suppressed spitting noise and Josh shot him a view, then he had to concentrate on the traffic again.

"It looks, like we are walking in the same track, Henry. Now…", Josh turned his head, when he reached a corner,; "Now…where to go? You´ll have to show me the way…And you´re quite sure we are talking about the same Donna you know from God else what…?" Josh was having some doubts, but Henry was the only one who could help now in finding this ominous Donna, Zoe had talked about.

"You can trust me, Josh…I´m very sure that I mean the same Lady your friend from the hospital talked about…" Henry directed into a road. Josh turned right and they followed a small road that lead to another corner where Henry directed him in a left turn.

They drove through a hell of a net of roads and sometimes Josh wondered if they would ever reach the target. But he did as Henry told him.

He must have strolled along all these streets over the years, Josh thought. Searching for a possibility to feed on anybody who he either compelled into letting him feed or he had attracted not so unwilling people to participate in a one night stand with a special background. In every case it must have been difficult…

Finally they reached a road, where in the dim light of the lamps were a lot of people standing in a row.

"There it is…", Henry directed to the group of people who were obviously waiting patiently for anything.

"And you never fed on any of those…?" Josh sounded skeptically when he drove the car in a free parking lot nearby. This part of the city didn´t look as to let a car out of side for long. Some dark figures were hiding under protruding roofs of small shops and in the doorframe of houses. Their clothes looked simple, shabby down to ruined. Josh didn´t want to know what they were doing there. For sure drugs or things you better won´t know.

"No, I kept myself away from them…as a food source. I´ve told you before…I was on the run but I searched my donors anywhere else…" Henry sounded slightly…annoyed. "Never touched anyone of them. Not me! I don´t know if any of the other orphans ever hunted this ground and this had been none of my business, Josh!"

"Sorry…didn´t want to annoy you…just a question that came to mind when I see them…In movies or novels…that kind modern stuff…vampires often feed on these people. It looks so much easy…"

Henry looked at him when they locked up the car.

"How long have you been living together with a vampire, eh?"

"Since two years…", Josh confessed.

"Then you should know that your beloved movies and books have nothing to do with the reality of the life of a vampire who has been banished and has to care for his very life, Josh…"

Josh nodded and decided to avoid this theme furthermore. The only thing he knows was that Aidan either fed from living sources in a club or he kept on bagged food.

"There are forensics out there and if you leave a corpse behind to be found by the police…they´ll be going to track you down any time…", he warned him.

"Think so…"

"We had such a problem before and since Bishop is off, we have no one to keep problems flying low under the radar. None to wipe the dust under the carpet…"

"I guess so…"

Josh looked over to the entrance and he and Henry crossed the street. Carefully they stepped nearer and Josh tried to catch a look into the large room. A man beside him tipped onto his shoulder when he stepped more forward.

"Hey, Mister…maybe you don´t know! But this is a row! You have to wait behind!", he grunted and directed to the end of the row.

"Normally yes. I would agree with you…"

"Then…DO it!"

"We are not waiting to get a meal, we simply want to talk to Donna…Is she in here tonight?" Josh tried to explain without raising his voice. Nor to sound uncertain. Simply calm.

"We don´t like cops in here, Mister!" the man barked. "And no of you guys from the health control! _Donna makes fine meals_!" The last words came out with insistence.

"I don´t doubt the quality of her meals. We simply want to talk to her in a special point…"

"You have to wait unt…", the man insisted, obviously not willing to give in an inch of his fought precious position in the row of people.

Josh rolled his eyes and sighed resignedly.

In this moment Henry came into the game.

He looked at the man and his voice changed to a resonant timbre.

"It´s okay. Stay calm! He doesn´t want your meal! You will let him go and forget that he ever asked you! You´ve never seen him and you will get your meal as usual!" Henry commanded with a slight smile.

The man´s eyes narrowed, he shook his head and relaxed. His hand fell down and he shoved it into his pocket. The evening was cold and there were a bunch of guys before him…

Henry smiled and Josh´s eyes narrowed also. Before the nurse could ask a thing, he felt that Henry softly pushed him forward, his lips near to his left ear.

"Go on, Josh! He won´t disturb us now…" Henry whispered and Josh stepped forward into the warm room. Through a lot of chairs and tables they went to the backside of the soup kitchen. Henry took over the leadership. He headed for the desk behind which a woman in her middle ages stood. Dressed in a smock, her seemingly long hair stuffed under a head cloth. She smiled at both man when she turned from the big pots full of meat, soup and vegetables.

"Henry! Nice you´re looking in again! It had been a long time since I saw you in here the last time…" She put the spoon down and stretched her hand to him. Henry took it and smiled.

"You are looking so well, Donna…" Henry smiled.

Donna watched his face more closely and a sad expression flitted over her face.

"You´re looking like you hadn´t been so well over the last time…", she said when she saw distinct traces of the barely healed abrasions on his face.

"Had been roughed up a bit but it´s okay now…You must not worry, Donna…", he tried to calm her concern. Donna knew him over a long period and she knew him well enough that the slight changes were visible in his face. Another human won´t have registered them. Not so with Donna. She had much finer senses then normal human beings, more receptiveness and a deeper insight.

Josh stood behind him and a slight disbelief appeared on his face when he saw Henry being so familiar with her. He tipped him on the shoulder.

"He, Henry…what´s going on? You said that you had nothing to do with these people…?" Josh began somewhat awkward, his voice a barely audible whisper. His eyes checked the room. But there were only people all over, eating, talking, waiting to get a meal. Nothing that looked threatening anyway. No other vampires around or any McNeal.

"I said that I had nothing to do with them, right. But that didn´t include Donna.", Henry answered in a low voice.

"So wherefrom do you know her?"

"She helped me with finding a place where I could put my head on and to get clean clothes now and then…I lived in the streets, Josh! Don´t forget that!" Henry shot him a view, then turned back to Donna who seemed to be used to such discussions among her guests.

"Will you both stay?", Donna asked and directed to a table nearby which was not occupied and a label with the word _reservation_ was placed on it.

"Can we talk anywhere? A place that would be less public? My friend needs your help and those are things not to be talked publicly…"

Friend!

Henry called him being his friend, Josh thought, being a bit astonished. But none the less he felt somewhat flattered. Their relation to each other had gone from a more _business like one_ to a much deeper connection. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Josh felt good with being roommate with Aidan, in whom he had found a true friend. Finding out about his son, who once came in as a barely accepted guest out of necessity and urgency, he had changed to a man/vampire to be really trustworthy. He couldn´t blame him for the events that had happened during the first encounter. It hadn´t been his personal fault that Aidan had gone to lengths to save his life…

Typical Aidan! Acting out of attempt spontaneously without thinking so far what could be happening as a result! He didn´t agree with Aidan´s behavior to bring in a wounded to death vampire, having a straight feeling about how this was going to end. Had only given in with the invitation to do Aidan a favor as a friend. He had felt reluctant, afraid and to some certain degree dumbfounded by the situation. But Henry had risked his safety by tricking his companions into death when he was sent to kill Aidan as a proof of his trustworthiness within the vampire family. Had given up his barely re-won membership in the family, what for he had lost his skin, only to help Aidan in his assault on Mother. These were evidences how deep the connection between Henry and Aidan still was, despite the decades they had been separated from each other.

How should he mistrust a man Aidan trusted with his life to? From Aidan he knew what had happened in those times, back from 1918 to the 30s, so he had won a much deeper insight into their connection. He had tried to think being all busy, the caring nurse only, when they had brought in Henry into his home seriously wounded the second time. Doing surgery on a vampire was somewhat strange but Josh was convinced that he won´t have put it into question when it would have come to Aidan, needing his help. As he had done to him when Bishop had tried to kill him.

In some points Henry was the more serious, the more calm one, especially in cases of decisions. Always thinking about before blindly acting like a berserk… Aidan was much older than him but more spontaneous what sometimes was a minus. Especially from him one would expect more thoughtfulness before doing anything. But that was what the difference made between both of them. None the less Henry always stood at his side when it was necessary.

"Josh?"

Josh barely heard the voice beside him, being deep in his thoughts. He twitched, when a hand was suddenly lying on his shoulder and he turned his face to Donna and Henry who stood there, the vampire slightly smiling at him.

Josh felt that he had missed a lot of their conversation, being trapped in his own memories. He smiled embarrassedly. Tried to get himself back in the track.

"Sorry! I had to think about something…What did you ask me?" He tried to look as if nothing had happened, the less being a dreamer.

Henry smiled.

"My friend Josh…", he began.

"Josh Levison!" Josh introduced himself to her to avoid her becoming suspicious about him.

"Josh! Uhm! Just call me Donna. Plain and simple." She smiled at him.

"You have been recommended to me by a dear colleague from the hospital! She´s in…in…I don´t know other as to call this…soul recycling…and she told me…"

"Not here, Josh!", Henry warned him and Donna nodded.

"I have a room we can talk in without anybody listening, Josh!", she whispered and directed to door at the other end of the room. "Let´s go over there…"

Donna waved to a young woman nearby who come nearer.

"Please take over for me until I´m back, Jenny…"

"Okay…no problem. Don´t be in a hurry, Donna!", The girl smiled and turned over to the waiting people, taking Donna´s job for a while until she would be back.

"She doesn´t know what that´ll be going to mean…until she´s back! If I´m right and she will help us, that won´t be so early…", Josh whispered to Henry when the three of them headed for the separate room. Donna closed the door behind them and directed to a simple group of a couch and two seats with their best times long behind.

Josh and Henry sat together with her.

Josh asked himself if Donna knew what Henry was.

Maybe.

She was called a witch by Zoe. Zoe hadn´t used the word but all what she had said about Donna left no doubt that she would call her a witch if anybody asked for a definition. She had spoken of magic and this thing was normally related with witches, magicians and shamans.

"What can I do for you?" Donna began with no hesitation.

"Uhm…" Josh was somewhat hesitating, didn´t know how to begin best. So he sighed and went on with what he knew about the events so far.

"Simply tell me what you know. I´ll see what I can make of it, Josh…" she encouraged him. Her voice was calm and serious.

Josh nodded, shot Henry a helpless view but the vampire nodded only. It meant; do it. So Josh began to tell her what he knew:

"I…we…", he corrected; "Have a friend. Sally! She´s a ghost and she formerly owned the house we are living in. Since a few months she got problems with another being or entity…she called him Reaper. He wanted her…to become like him…hunting, shredding ghosts. I don´t know what he really is and…but…"

"Did Sally speak about him? If he´s possessing her?"

"Sometimes yes…or no. I don´t know exactly. But he´s such a damn great threat to her. She didn´t want to become like him; shredding ghosts into kinda…non-existence or what it is…" Josh didn´t know how to describe it any better or more exactly.

Donna looked at them, she seemed to think. It took a few seconds before she answered;

"Non-existence! That´s not what it is. A ghost who hadn´t found his door to heaven is wandering around our world restlessly. Like your Sally does, I guess. She was still in the house or did she simply communicate with you through a medium?"

"We talk to her!"

"You yourself? So you have medium skills or…" She stared at him, right into his eyes, then she suddenly closed her eyes and stretched her hand toward Josh and Henry. A moment she said nothing and Josh saw how she concentrated onto them. He opened his mouth to speak but Henry gestured him to shut up. His lips closed again. Josh waited.

Donna opened her eyes.

"You…you are…Oh my God! You are a werewolf, Josh!"

"Yeap! For shit! Would…I won´t be…believe me." Josh sounded desperate and he felt a cold knot rising in his throat. "So you know…" he directed to Henry; "…what he is?"

"He´s a vampire! I found out the very first time I met him! And I know him since a long time. I´m running my soup kitchen since twelve years. Henry…", she smiled at him; "…came in one cold night when he came back to Boston. I promised him to help him and took the promise from him to spare my people in exchange…I would help him in exchange for him not feeding on them! He kept his word! You should trust him, Josh!"

"She organized me a place where I could sleep unharmed and new clothes when necessary…sometimes we simply talked a bit. Nothing more…" Henry shrugged his shoulders.

Donna nodded then she went on with explaining.

"When he urged her to shred ghosts and she did it…it´s like killing them and sending them to another state of being a ghost! It´s no relief! Did you ever hear from Limbo?"

"Limbo?"

"Limbo is a place behind the material world but not a place directly in hell…It´s a special place where souls are imprisoned until the day when the world ends and Christ will split them into condemnation or call them up into heaven. In early Christian times it was discussed as a place where the souls of children went to who hadn´t been baptized but were free of sins but for the original sin. There is no clear definition yet what it really is, but when Sally is there…"

"How can we get her out of there if this is indeed the place she´s caught in?" Josh sounded anxious.

"I have seen her in any place like a large hall! It was all foggy first and then she came out of a glowing red light. She looked terrible. Her skin was wrinkled and grey and shrunken like that of a mummy! She attacked me and there was anything behind it! It looked like she was driven by any unknown force that inhabited her! Not by her own will! She was like a monster. Not the woman I learned to know in her ghostly state." Henry explained his experience from the bathroom, "She seemed to get free for a mere second and this moment she screamed at me for help! Like she was caught in any terrible distress and punishment…"

"The radio…our radio in the living room! She came through it! I hadn´t switched it on but her voice was there and she screamed for help!", Josh reminded the moment when they all had returned to his home and even Atlee had been there who had helped him to get Aidan and Henry free. Enough witnesses for what had happened.

"What the heck can she come through a simple friggin´ radio? Unless there´s a studio down there wherever she is!", Josh sounded pissed off.

"Radio runs on ether waves. There´s some relation to the process of channeling or a séance where you make use of a medium…" Donna explained. Her voice was calm and she seemed to be the only one to stay calm at the moment because she could even hear Henry´s heart beating faster now that he went back through the recently events.

"What do you know of her disappearance?"

"Barely anything! I…I was off…Oh damn hell, hadn't I been off, I could have prevented it that she disappeared into where so ever!" Josh jumped up from his chair and started to walk through the small room nervously. His hands gesticulating through the air. He seemed so desperate. Henry´s face was stern and his lips were a slim line when he followed Josh with his eyes. He knew pretty well how nervous Josh could become when things went out of track.

"I should not have been off cause of this idiot! Ray! He always means trouble since the very moment he came into my life that night out in the woods! Aidan did well that he had thrown him off my home!"

"Aidan? What´s his full name?", Donna asked suspiciously.

"Why? Why do you ask me this now? What are you going to have to do with Aidan?"

"Uh…oh, once I know an Aidan…"

"There are a lot of Aidan´s out there! That´s of no interest in the moment…"; Josh grunted.

"Maybe. But not a lot of Aidan´s who are vampires…" Donna looked at him, waiting for an answer and waiting for him gonna see reason again. Josh whirled around, his hands pressed onto his hips, his face torn.

"What´s about this Aidan thing? Why the nuts are you asking me again and again?" He sounded impatiently.

"Well…", she breathed to win time, to bring herself down and not participating into his mood; "I know his…father…", she managed a smile and directed to Henry.

"You? Know what? His…father?" Josh stuttered.

"Yes. Henry isn´t the only vampire I know. There´s a whole bunch of them out there. And had ever been. Boston is a large and important city. Not only to human beings. And when you would call me a witch then you shouldn´t wonder I know about more things than usual residents!"

Josh needed a moment to swallow down the facts she hurled at him. This woman was incredible. Zoe hadn´t him prepared to the slightest of what was waiting for him here… Into which challenge he was heading. Don´t ever think about what will be to come when we go for Sally! He hadn´t any glue and he didn´t want to imagine right now.

Henry shot him a view and when Josh nodded finally, he turned over to Donna again and his voice was calm and low;

"My friend is upset because Sally got lost. And I´m too. I and Aidan got caught by enemies and Josh got us free. Aidan lives with him and Sally until she disappeared into what seemed to be a part of hell. We have to get her back under all circumstances, Donna! Josh asked for help. Anybody who´ll be experienced enough to do so! You have been recommended by a woman from the hospital where he and Aidan are working. Her name is Zoe. Do you know her?" Henry stepped into the discussion and got a relieved view from Josh, doing so. He seemed to relax a bit, now, that Henry had taken the leadership. There for it didn´t matter that Henry offered details free and open. Donna needed as much information as possible and in the moment Henry seemed to be the one having more overview of the causal connections.

Despite the fact that he felt all turmoil from inside. The encounter with Sally or the thing she once had been, had shaken him to the base. He wasn´t used to visions or what so ever it had been. He had run his vampire life since Aidan had turned him. He never had close encounters with ghosts until the day he came into Josh´s home and since Josh had offered him a room to stay.

Sally was something special.

She was far from the normal definition of a ghost as a haunting thing from castles, with no other business as to shock people until the day of release from unearthly punishment.

But now she was caught in some strange...purgatory was the wrong word, he thought...some place where she terribly turned into something so weird, so horrifying.

And she needed help. Henry had no doubts that she was unable to free herself from what so ever she had done to herself. Or was done to her from anybody else. Maybe this Reaper had done it to her or he had warded her off into it by cruel intentions. Sally had been totally afraid of him. Had been afraid of becoming like him.

Or becoming him!

Maybe she had tried to flee from it by entering this...Limbo. Henry didn´t know the concept of Limbo. He had been told of a hell when he was a child at school. But none talked about the Limbo thing. To difficult.

Henry watched over to Donna.

"How can we get Sally back, Donna?"

His voice stern, calm only by long training. Inside he felt his heart racing at the thought of what was to come.

A moment no one said a word. Josh stared at Donna as if he could get an answer by sheer force of will. But she kept silence for a very long moment. When she finally spoke her words came out slowly, thoughtful.

"It´s not that I can bring her back..."

"Who. ELSE?" Josh almost shouted out of excitement. Henry laid a hand on his forearm, looked at him with these eyes that seemed to switch to bled black vampire state at any moment.

"Don´t do that!", Josh whispered nearly inaudible. Henry heard his hope fell like a stone into a pit. He got more and more used to this human/werewolf. Since he had never been involved in any cruel pit fight events. The wolf fights that were arranged to entertain the vampires.

Josh sighed but Henry looked at him, his lips moved.

"Let her explain, Josh...please..." He was begging. It was no order or command. Henry knew how very near to the edge Josh was.

Donna sighed.

"I mean, I can´t bring her back simply by doing some magic, performing some ritual like in a pentagram to call her up and back into our world! I´m going to need a...a medium..." she explained.

"A medium? You mean you´re gonna need another witch or magician or anybody else...? That we have to get another person involved?" Josh didn´t feel comfortable with involving Zoe into the task. She had been so reluctant.

"Not another person, another human!"

"What else? Crows, ravens, a...werewolf or a vampire...?" Josh gasped and crawled through his hair. He looked at her in a mood like...

Like being hung from the window and anybody was going to burn the rope he was tied with to the window´s frame.

Maybe she was going to do some terrible sacrifice as a price to be paid for Sally´s soul. Josh had read of terrible rituals performed in the past by mad people. Human sacrifice. Cut off hearts like from the Maya rituals. Animal blood involved. Worse to be blood from pigs! He shuddered at the thought of pigs. Pigs were forbidden, were despised in Jewish culture. Pigs fed on corpses of animals. And humans. Beside they were nuzzling through the mud for food.

Or the life of a vampire to be sacrificed in order to safe Sally´s.

He couldn´t stand the thought of Aidan being killed for...

His throat constricted and he choked. He bent sideward, felt a hand comforting his back. Henry looked at him in concern.

"It´s okay...", he mumbled.

"It didn´t sound like that..." Henry calmly stated.

Josh nodded for affirmation. "I´m okay!"

Henry nodded and looked at Donna again.

"I would need a corpse...", she went on.

Josh stared at her in shock.

"Corpse? Oh my God! Don´t tell me we are to steal a corpse from the morgue! Or from a burial service! Don´t make me..."

"Not any corpse. But a special one..."

Horrifying pictures shot through his mind.

"Tell...Me...", his lips trembled when he tried to ask.

"I would need Sally´s corpse! She would have to be unburied, dug up. Because I need the corpse to call her soul back from Limbo... Like in the Egyptian necromancer ritual where the soul is called back into the corpse to wake up the dead and make them walking around again.

"We don´t wanna have Sally walking in her corpse like a Zombie! She is...had been a ghost! No walking dead!"

"The ritual would call back her soul into her corpse only as part of a...transfer. A transit. She wouldn´t stay caught in a rotting body! By no means! In a state in between. During the ritual her soul is called back into the corpse and then back into our world. The body is only a medium strong enough to prevent her or anybody else, like this Reaper, to pull her back into Limbo again. Other than Sally he can´t switch to material bodies. A Reaper can´t body switch! Once the soul is implemented into the body it is out of reach for him. He has no such power over bodies, only over ghosts which are immaterial." she explained.

"And what is the price we will have to pay for it?" Josh asked. He sounded afraid. Any magic, any ritual performed to get something, had its price. Hell didn´t give away anything without a return for it. Those he was told since his childhood.

And they were going to call upon hell for the return of Sally!

Fear clawed at his heart.

Josh breathed irregular and he jumped up from the seat, shaking his head no again and again. Henry rose from his seat, his eyes following him.

"Please, Josh, sit down...", he urged. Henry hesitated to become more massive in his attempt to calm him down. "Josh!"

"No! I can´t do that! I won´t call upon hell! Even not for Sally! I...I don´t risk my very soul! I would be condemned like her!" Josh walked back and forth and he shook his head, stared at Donna, then at Henry in a helpless gesture of desperation. Henry could read it in his eyes. Josh was totally afraid. Fear had caught his heart and his mind.

Josh didn´t hear when Donna said anything.

A cloud of numbness had taken possession of his body. The walls of the room seemed to move away and the air seemed to fill with fog. His heart pounded in his ears with a loud noise and he felt his knees weaken. He was wavering. His hand rose to his head and he let out a gasping sound. The room pulsed, shrinking and spreading again only to shrink again. The faces in front of him became uncertain. The sofa...it shot upward and...

He felt hands at his sides. Hands which caught him under the shoulders and Josh felt that was seated onto the chair. A face was hovering in front of him. Slowly his sight became more clear and he breathed with effort. A hand stroked back his hair, stayed on his left temple.

"Josh...easy...easy...it´s okay...!" Henry. "Calm down...hm, what happened? You´re looking more pale than me when you got me out of my prison..." Henry turned to Donna; "Can you get him a glass of water, please..."

"What´s going on, Henry?" Donna asked while she filled a glass with water, reached it to him.

"Josh had been shot not long ago. He had lost a lot of blood...I think, he exhausted himself a bit since he came to help me and Aidan..."

"I didn´t overexerted myself !", Josh protested.

Black eyes looked into his. He tried to pull back but the hand stayed.

"Sscchhh...Drink! Josh, you need some rest and..."

"You´re kidding me! Don´t make yourself playing up your role as medic! This had been long ago, vampire!", Josh grunted and tried to shove back the hand with the glass but Henry smiled simply and Josh resigned, took the glass and began to drink. He didn´t want to give in but Henry was right. The last days had taken its toll on him. But he won´t tell him!

Henry sat beside him onto the arm rest of the chair. Josh felt his side at his shoulder.

"How do you think we´ll manage this? You said that you need Sally´s body and I..."

A cell rang. Josh looked astonished, grabbed for the pocket of his jeans, fumbled with it to get his cell out. The sound was unnerving and it seemed to take an eternity until he could pull it out. He answered the call.

"Who´s that? What do you want?" He grunted into his cell, "I´m busy!"

Henry tipped onto the display, warning him to take a more closer view.

The voice at the other end of the line tried to stay calm despite the fact that Josh was the most impolite person around.

"Hey, Josh! You don´t have to shout at me! I can hear your friggin´ heart beating like hell is freezing down to below zero, still from here!" Aidan gave back. "Take a breath and then explain me where you are and why you dude of a wolf guy left without waking me!"

"Hell is freezing down, Aidan! She...she wants us to dug up Sally´s corpse! Dug her up! Can you imagine this, Aidan.? She...she drives me mad! Calling out for hell! I don´t do that. I DON`T!"

"I can imagine a lot of things, Josh!...Who wants you to dug up Sally?"

"Donna! She...I...we..."

"Donna! Looks like she really mixed you up a bit..."

"Why?"

"Because you are stuttering like a 6 year old boy, meeting Santa Claus life...!"

"I´m not stuttering, Aidan and she wants us to participate in a ritual of necromancy! I...", Josh threw his arms up in a desperate gesture. Henry grabbed his hands midair.

"Stop. STOP JOSH! Where are you? Listen! I´m coming! Where are you, Josh? And is Henry with you?"

"Yup! We are at Donna´s. Her soup kitchen in Downtown Boston! I guess you know where it is for she said you know her!"

"Okay, I know where you are. Wait for me, I´m with you in some fifteen minutes..." Aidan urged him and the Bing from the other end told Josh that Aidan had hung up.

_…__regardless of how dark it`ll be._

Josh stared at his cell like it had done something personally to him. A hand was laid on his forearm and he looked up. Henry´s face was directly in front of him, but the vampire eyes were cerulean, this impossible blue, clear like the sky on a sunny summer day.

"Sit down, Josh...come on, we´ll wait for Aidan..." his voice was soft and he felt Josh´s beating pulse under his fingertips.

The man who had saved him twice was all nervous now. Where had the cool nurse gone? The man who hadn´t flinched when it came to get a 98 percent dead vampire down from a hook in his chest. But now he clearly was on the edge and Henry hoped that the presence of Aidan would help to get him down a bit. The buck eyed human looked around through the room. His fingers clenched into each other.

"There´s no reason to be...afraid, Josh. Donna will help us and I know her for long! She won´t do anything that will harm Sally or endanger anybody´s soul! Trust her! Please, Josh!" Henry whispered and his hand was lying cool and heavy on Josh´s.

Strange enough, Josh felt a bit more comfortable with it. This vampire was...amazing. Once he had been an unwelcomed guest out of friendship with another vampire, but now he turned of to become a...

...friend.

"Okay...I´ll be fine, Henry..." Josh whispered and his view went over to Donna. Josh felt a bit ashamed to show such weakness, but...

Normally this wasn´t his way. He was used to handle problems from his job but now it looked like he was the one who needed help.

Aidan had simply pulled over his hoodie and his leather jacket before he jumped into his car. He nearly wrecked the motor when he drove the car out of the narrow court yard. Aidan cursed and pulled into the only free track on the main street. Impatiently he drove behind a truck that seemed to have gone down to the speed of a slug. He hit on the steering wheel with the flat hand but that didn´t help anyway.

Finally the truck turned in another road and Aidan had a free lane until he drove into the narrow streets of Downtown Boston.

After twenty minutes he reached the corner where Donna ran her soup kitchen. Aidan simply parked and slammed the door shut. When he entered the large room he saw either Josh nor Henry nor Donna. He turned to the woman who was serving meals.

"Hi, where do I find Donna? She´s with my friends!"

"You´re...Mr...?" she hesitatingly began. Donna had her instructed to let in no one but a man called Aidan.

"Aidan! Aidan Waite. I´m a friend of Donna! So tell me where..." Aidan grew impatiently. He could simply turn over and follow his nose like a dog but that would have been suspicious. Keep the track when handling with humans as long as you´re not gonna feed on them, he warned himself. He waited if to put press onto her.

"Uhm, she´s in there..." she directed to a door nearby and Aidan grunted a short Thank you when he turned over and hurried to the room´s entrance. He knocked. Waited. Looked down onto his feet on the threshold.

The natural hesitation of a vampire in front of a door frame.

"Come in!" A voice came from inside the room. It was Donna´s.

When Aidan entered the room he directly felt the tensed atmosphere in it. Anything was going on and when he looked at Josh his first thought was confirmed. He had tried to concentrate on the traffic, not mixing all the fragments around which Josh had hastily spat at him on phone. Aidan was to some certain degree used to Josh being half in, half out of the track. But the fact that Henry was crouched in front of him, his hands on the forearms of Josh added to the feeling that something was definitely wrong in the moment. Josh´s face was torn, tensed and he looked exhausted… Maybe he had overexerted himself when helping him and Henry out of danger. Eventually Josh had gotten shot not all too long ago. The wound was barely healed.

"Aidan! I haven´t seen you for so long…" Donna came over to him, closing her arms around him for an intense hug. Aidan smiled and bent back his head, looking into her eyes.

"I had some slight problems over the last time, Donna, I´m so sorry…" He hugged her warmly, caring not to hurt her with his vampire strength. Aidan smiled silently at the thought that Donna still could simply get him excited like being a teeny going the first time for a woman. He always had felt comfortable with her. Donna was a woman who, by her skills, had known directly what Aidan was when she met him for the first time. She had been careful but not afraid of him, provided with the knowledge that there was more in between heaven and earth than the normal science would proof true. He cupped her temples and set a soft kiss of friendship onto her cheek. When Donna saw his concerned expression she let him turn over to Josh.

"What´s going on with Josh?" Aidan asked Henry. His voice was full of concern.

"Josh was near fainting. I´m afraid he exhausted himself a bit after all what had happened but he…" Henry grinned at Josh; "…dearly denies it!" His voice turning serious like a teacher with an unsteady child.

"What´s he talking about, he?" Josh protested and tried to hide the fact that he felt like disappearing into the ground any moment. But he was sitting and so no one would get his real condition. He hated it when Aidan was riding around on any weaknesses like he was an older brother, being responsible for him. Damn. He had survived Ray´s werewolf attack! By this denying to himself the fact that he had barely survived by luck. Stu was less fortunate. He had been killed. But maybe Ray had simply killed Stu to get rid of this perky guy. Who, in afterlife, has had the boldness to steal his penis!

When Aidan felt for Josh´s pulse point at the throat, Josh warded his hand off angrily.

"I´m OKAY! I´m none of your patients, Aidan! If you´re damn searching for a release of your caring instincts or are gonna want to care for anyone…than care for what Donna is going to tell you! That would be friggin´ enough to care about!"

Aidan rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in a gesture of innocence, meaning; I barely touched you, the less…anything more! He sighed and stood up, took an empty seat on the sofa.

"So, would you be so kind to tell us what you have in the pipe to get Sally back into our track. Or our world or whatsoever."

"Josh told me that she´s hold captive by the Reaper…To get her free I´ll have to call her soul back into her body. For this I´m gonna need her body…"

"But…but she´s buried deep and secure in the ground…more safe than me!" Aidan shot back and missed it to hide the last part. He bit his lip in frustration, hoping Donna won´t have heard the last words but he was wrong.

"You had been buried? Oh My God! When did this happen?"

"Recently. I´m back, fresh from the grave, so to say…" Aidan mumbled in a low voice. Not glad to come with such details

"Crap…" she simply stated. Donna breathed deep, wiped through her hair and went on. "I need the body…otherwise the Reaper would pull her back into the Limbo. This Reaper is a powerful…ghost is a word way too weak to express what he is! He´s very dangerous, maybe more than you would even imagine…"

"I have felt a powerful anything behind Sally when I…when I saw her,,,! I didn´t know if I should call this a vision…I have absolutely no experience with visions. Never ever met a ghost before Sally…", Henry mixed in. "I´m afraid I won´t be of much help..."

"But you helped a lot when you described me what you have seen..."

"I...I didn´t know how it happened...I was in the bathroom for some water and suddenly I felt weak..I had lost a lot of blood before...and then I...I kinda fainted and when I woke up..."

"I guess you didn´t really wake up, Henry...your weakened body opened its mind for the vision or the call..." Donna suggested.

"Call? Which call?"

"Her scream for help. She used you instead of the radio like Josh described it..."

Henry stared at her. The imagination of becoming a life transponder for Sally´s screams for help was threatening him.

"A living being who is receptive for her, like a vampire or a werewolf is much easier to use than a dead, means lifeless machine."

"I have only experience with ghosts, werewolves and those of my kind. The cellar floor of the hospital hides a lot of them. Most nurses and doctors fled the area calling it a spooky place…" He had brought Sally down there, with no success.

"Yeap, call him a demon...that would fit much more! I´m convinced that the Reaper is a powerful fallen angel or a servant right to the devil or Astaroth…"

"Astaroth?! Who´s that guy?" Aidan asked. He had never heard this name.

_Feverfew? Is that a band?- It´s a herb! A herb! _Aidan slightly smiled at the thought of Josh´s reaction to his desperate question for a cure when the garlic had made him vamp out.

"Who´s that Astaroth?"

"He is the Counselor of hell, right to Lucifer, who is the devil himself. He is an all over and most dangerous demon. His ranking is directly below Lucifer, call him a Vice president!" Donna took a deep breath and her eyes closed for a moment when she thought back to the moment she had to handle a demon for the first time in her career as a witch or shaman woman.

It had been an terrifying encounter.

"But...but can´t use the Reaper us as a vessel for his...will...?" Josh asked, his voice trembling when he thought of the logical consequences which were indicated by her statement. "He could probably manipulate us, having power over us?!"

"He can´t manipulate or penetrate living beings. Sally…did she switch bodies?"

"Yes! YES! She did...I think it´s kinda renitent! I don´t like it...her drifting in and out of bodies, using them for her entertainment..." Josh remembered when she had told him about her experiences.

"The Reaper has only power over ghosts. He can shred them, sending them into the Limbo by this...but he can´t hurt humans. He is immaterial like Sally or any ghost. He will be invisible to humans but those who are mediums or sensitive enough to see or feel the presence of a ghost..."

"And what do you think how this works? Using a...body to bring her back?" Josh asked Donna; "You said that you will use her body for this...this necromancer ritual when...But she´s buried. Like Aidan said! I even don´t know on which cemetery! And how do you imagine this to do? And all of it; where? In the woods...?"

"We have to do it in her home!" Donna explained. A few words which drove him mad. House. The house!

"At home!" Aidan stated shortly. He looked rather unimpressed.

"Wait! Wait a moment! Stop, Aidan! You´re not gonna tell me that you´ll put a corpse in my bed! A corpse! A rotting heap of stench!" Josh´s voice went into overdrive, became nervous and high pitched. He jumped up from the chair and ran to the other side of the table, his hands grabbing into the air like claws, searching for a hold.

"Sally will be a mummy after all the time, Josh! At least she won´t soak through the bed sheets with blood like a skinned vampire!...You can go vacuuming after her...", Aidan smirked.

Josh shot him a glare like he was going to stake him. Damn! That wasn´t funny! He stomped his foot on the ground, hands on the hips and shook his head no. His view was full of despair when he looked over again to Henry and Donna, searching for any support, any help.

Why the nuts was everything he got involved, starting to turn into chaos? Why had all these things to happen to _him_?

"You have to dig her out when you have verified where she´s buried..."

"We would have to search all the cemeteries in whole Boston! That would take months!", Josh protested.

Aidan shook his head no.

"Not that long!"

"But..." Josh looked at him skeptically, his brows knitted.

"Sally once told me where she is buried. She visited her own grave...she wanted to see what and if Danny was doing anything there...So I know where we´ll have to search for her corpse..." Aidan smiled slightly. Josh let out a breath of relief but then another thought hit his mind. The cemetery was public area and when they went there to dig her up, everybody who was watching them by coincidence would become suspicious about what they were doing.

"Wait, Aidan! We simply can´t dig her up! What, if anybody catch up on us while doing so? They would call in the cops! Cause of desecration of a grave! Disturbing the peace of the dead! The judge would be very excited to nail me into Jail County!" Josh protested.

"Are there any criminal records you didn´t tell me about, Josh?" Aidan smirked widely, but Josh didn´t find that funny now. Aidan regretted his banter directly when he saw the look in Josh´s face. "We´ll get her out secretly, Josh." He added more seriously. What he said didn´t do to get Josh relaxing a bit. He was so tensed he nearly twitched with tension when he moved slightly.

"And how do you want to get that ready, Aidan? This is a public place, not that damn graveyard out in nowhere where they dug you in!" Josh protested, referring to the area where Mother had her lair. The place where Suren had been grounded and where Aidan had been grounded in the same friggin´ box. And you don´t have this guy...this bloodsucking asshole Marcus...Peace to his ashes! Who had done all the dirty work for you guys!"

Aidan nodded.

"He´s gone. For good luck. Rebecca solved that problem on a very rudimentary way. Like she always did..." He grinned; "But we´ll find a new one to solve some certain and special problems... "

"If you mean to solve your guys issues with gone-wrong meals! Gonna need anyone who does and shuts up afterwards. Keeping lips sealed. Some certain and special problems..as you so eloquently put it...guess who´s gonna do that after your Bishop is gone too!" Josh spat at him and took up again his walk through the room. His hands clung to his crossed arms and now and then he gestured wildly before he finally stopped in front of the window to the back yard. He stared outside, his front teeth chewing on his lower lip.

Henry shot Aidan a view. An unspoken question stood written on his face: Will he support us under these circumstances?

"We need someone from a burial service who is willing to help us with digging up Sally´s corpse..." Aidan whispered to Henry.

"Before we unfortunately started our assault against Mother...I´ve heard that there shall be a new mortician in town...among vampires such things spread like wildfire. I don´t know if Mother attempted to contact him for they were in need for a new...help! One who would do the clean ups for the family...like Josh called it;...the gone-wrong-meals!" Henry watched over to Josh who had abruptly turned around and now stepped back to them.

"If he didn´t contract with Mother he would be free to work together with _us_! Because we´re out of the family again now, we can´t call upon their help!" Aidan mumbled. "We not only have to stay away from them, we will have to avoid them at all costs. Otherwise we would be ending up with stakes in the heart and Josh would have been put into a deadly pit dog fight again, if not, they would burn him alive instead!"

"WHAT? What? Who´s gonna be burned alive at the stake...?" Horrifying images of people burning alive shot through his mind and the stench of burned flesh filled his nostrils. Josh gasped with…it was fear, despair, disgust, pain. All at once. Then, after terrifying seconds he found back to where he was. The scent had only been an olfactory memory his brain had stored, when he had worked in the Emergency Room of the Boston Suffolk and they had brought in a victim of a fire accident. "ME? WHY? And what for the heck?" Josh´s voice rose, became high pitched and his brown eyes were mirrors of panic. Oh no! He didn´t want to end up like this. Dead or alive. He didn´t want to be on the list of anybody for a terrible death sentence. Either of vampires nor a werewolf hunter. He barely had survived a shoot out not too long ago. Death threat won´t have to become a regular in his life!

The preternatural creatures are standing in a row to kill me… Who had this been? Wherefrom did he know this sentence? His mind worked hard under the current conditions and then it hit him flat in the face. A woman, once being a cop and by now a private detective… she had been hunting down demons together with a vampire anywhere up in Toronto. A TV show. Josh gasped with some relief when his brain provided him with the answer.

He felt terribly distracted by now. WTF had everything to come up at the same time? Especially when he felt so under pressure like now when it came to solve a nearly unsolvable problem…

Josh shot a helpless look at Aidan and Henry, his fists opening and closing unintentionally under the emotional pressure. He would so liked to jump out of the room and run into nowhere. As he was to forget everything when it was Full Moon and he simply turned into a wolf, running only by his basic instincts. Going rid of all everyday´s issues and restrictions.

He didn´t like this aspect of werewolfism. An aspect Ray had clung to so dearly. To live the wolf inside. To give in and simply be something totally different for one night of every month, as long as he would be alive and as long as there would be a moon.

Aidan sighed under his breath. Josh was going into overdrive. By the moment everything he picked up, made him more excited only…

A joke wouldn´t make the question´s answer better. It would only make it worse. So he kept his mouth shut, swallowing his comment down. Instead he said:

"Mother is at war with all of us now, because of what you and we have done! You…setting us free from imprisonment and me and Henry for an attempt of regicide. That´s what I´ve tried to explain to you. She hates werewolves and wouldn´t hesitate to kill you any which way!"

Josh`s face was stern and he stared at both vampires, his eyes all skeptical and his voice was trembling, what he tried to hide behind cynicism, when he finally spoke;

"What plan are you concocting, he? Beside getting me in or out of the option to become barbecue for vampires?" His voice went an octave higher and he felt the urge to grab Aidan by his shoulders, shaking him to get an answer. "Maybe you would be so kind and try to inform me too what you two guys concocted!" He planted himself in front of Aidan, and instead of shaking his shoulders, he put his hands on his hips. Josh´s eyes, mostly doe eyed, now were brown fire.

Aidan could smell his excitement and anger like a wave of salty air on the beach.

"How far will you go for Sally?" Josh hissed. His voice cracked.

He whirled around, his face showing his despair. His eyes narrowed, he threw an angry look at Aidan.

Henry looked at Aidan who nodded his consent for what he knew what his son was going to do and Henry went for Josh. There had been built up a connection between Henry and Josh, of which Henry was going to take advantage now. Josh had come in with him first and Aidan didn´t want to mix up now additionally. Didn´t want to press Josh from both sides.

Henry grabbed Josh by the shoulder and with soft but definite force he turned him over until Josh had to face the younger vampire. His inner turmoil hit Henry full force when he heard his heart beat speeding up and felt the racing pulse under his fingers in the crook of his neck.

For a mere second the life under his fingers and in his ears let raise a wave of…hunger. By the same time mixed with a deep urge to comfort him on the other side. Henry didn´t know what attracted him on Josh beside the fact that he was human. But his blood was of no use for him, would be even kind of poisonous to him because Josh was a werewolf. And normally he should feel despised by a werewolf up to natural grown hatred. But Aidan made friends with Josh and so it wasn´t impossible to accept Josh, up to finally live together with him. Additionally Henry felt the urge, after eighty years of being on the run, being alone except for a very few mortal friends, for being with real friends beside Aidan being his _father._ He felt that he had lived on his own and alone long enough. Going to spent the rest of eternity alone wasn´t an option for him. He always had been with friends in his mortal life and the vampire family had become his home until Aidan banished him from all, out of anger and also for his own safety.

"Josh! Please calm down...Aidan is not going to do anything that will endanger your or anybody´s soul!...But we need anybody who will dig up Sally legally...maybe, if I find this guy...he can help us!"

"And you are going to him, telling him; Hi, I´m a vampire and I need you to dig up a corpse! Oh my God! Don´t tell me bopkus! I..I´m not..." He gasped, let himself sank onto the sofa under Henry´s hands. Henry bent to him, his face calm, his voice low.

"Josh, please. You helped me and Aidan! You saved my life and that of Aidan out of friendship. I trust you with my life and you didn´t betray this trust...So you should trust him in this task!...Josh! You want Sally back and Donna..." Henry directed to Donna; "...she will do what is necessary to get her back from...from Limbo."

"What means doing magic! I´m afraid of doing any magic, Henry...!" Josh whispered; "That shouldn´t be, Henry. There´s no good in magic!"

Josh felt strong doubts about participating in any magic. All he had learned before, made the alarm bells ringing in his head. Magic was always bad, dark and used to call upon demons and evil ghosts. He knew nothing else but this and the thought of it let his hair stood on end.

"Donna is a witch...that´s probably true, Josh, but she always does _white magic_ which is used to help people, not to harm them!" Henry tried to explain. He knew Donna for a long period and trusted her with it. By all what he had learned over the decades he knew whom to trust.

"Did she do magic for you? Or any of you guys?" Josh asked, his voice low, skeptical.

"No, not for me but I learned to know about cases in which she had been involved in helping...She´s a honorable character, Josh!" Henry whispered and looked over to Donna out of the corner of his eye.

Donna rose from the chair and sighed when she saw that Henry was fixing onto her. Handling this man who had come for her help was growing difficult. She was used to people not being font of magic or not being used to it. Maybe Josh has had other conceptions before he came to her. That often occurred when people with no experience in the supernatural asked for her help out of despair. She felt no mistrust but simple fear instead. Josh seemed to be a good man, caught in a situation far from anything he knew since then. He was human but a werewolf. Strange enough that he came together with two vampires because normally both species were deadly enemies. Donna had poked her nose into all this stuff since the very moment when Henry appeared on her threshold for the first time.

Since they became trusting friends and he warmed up step by step, knowing to be understood and accepted by her, Henry had told her a lot of human-vampire-werewolf relations. He never had mixed up into the cruel entertainment of pit fights, where werewolves were set onto each other for a deadly combat. Just to entertain the vampires who bet on them like humans did with horse races. They justified this by being werewolves the nether creatures and though having a natural right to use them for their cruel purposes.

Their relationship had come to be proved when one night Henry came into her house, starving since days and asked her to let him drink, out of despair. He hadn´t fed since days because those elders had been in town and he had to hide in his lair, not being able to search for blood among willing or unwilling donors. The streets hadn´t been safe for him and the other orphans, hiding anywhere on different places. Donna remembered when he had come to her. By the first look she saw in which bad condition he was. His cheeks hollow, the skin pale and cold beyond the slightly coolness vampire skin always had, because vampires had a lower body temperature.

He had shrugged back from her touch when she grabbed for his hands out of habit. The glare in his eyes, despite they were still blue, was that of hunger. A silent threat even when he tried to keep it under control, but Donna knew him all too well for mistaking it. He had stepped back, hesitating against his urges, the burning hunger in his veins driving him into running on his basic and feral vampire instincts. Henry didn´t know how to solve this issue, tilt his hunger without harming her, for she couldn´t offer him bagged blood or any way to fed from her without so much as biting her. He knew by experience that in this state of hunger it would be very difficult for him to hold back, to keep control and not going to hurt her unintentionally.

But Donna had known in which despair he had been.

Against all odds and common human mind she had offered her to him, trusting him so far he wouldn´t go too far with her. To make it much easier for him and to get some comfort by herself she had taken Henry into her bedroom, offering him the possibility to feed his preferred way: Mixing sex with feeding. She had hope, that it would help him to relax while feeding and by this taking his tension from him and offering himself some comfort and familiar practice. Running on long trained habits had let him relax fast and the night ended up with some enjoyment for both of them.

For Donna it had been a new experience. Vampires possessed endurance far beyond a human man and a short recovery that enabled them to go on whole nights. Finally she had allowed herself to fell asleep in his arms, sated and exhausted at the same time.

They hadn´t been lovers.

Had only been good friends and Donna wasn´t the one for one-night-stands in general. She had done this out of mercy and Henry had granted her some pleasure in exchange for her trust.

She watched Josh walking through the room, his hands now shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

"Can we talk about how to go on? Maybe it´s better when you or Aidan will take over the leadership…I guess your friend has good intentions but he lacks of experience with un-grounding of a corpse…maybe you…" she whispered into Henry´s ear, bringing up his vampire existence. Maybe Henry had experience with corpses because sometimes a feeding went wrong and she thought him to be the much tough one when it came to handle with the dead.

"Please ask Aidan about it! Josh is his friend…I came only into the game by coincidence…"

"But you…" she began. Was everybody now gonna be too afraid to step up to the plate?

Henry shook his hand, tilted it in Aidan´s direction and she turned over to Aidan with a shrug of her shoulders.

Aidan had followed the whole discussion and when Donna came to him, he simply nodded.

"Okay! Looks like this is gonna stick on my heels again like a whole cattle herd´s poop!" Aidan grunted, baring his fangs in a devilish grin and then he shot Josh a view, under which his mortal friend twitched. "Okay…so tell me. It´s time to end this crap up and go on like usual again! I´ve spent way too much time in a damn box with deadly dullness…"

"If you´re complaining about deadly dullness…you´re way too much alive!" Josh shot back. "And don´t ever dare to handle me like your child!" His voice was angry when he turned around to Donna, ready to give her an amount of his annoyance too. This woman… Damn, they were dependent from her but she didn´t know anything of him. The man he had been risen to be by his father. He wanted…he wanted… His teeth clenched and Aidan stopped him with a wave of his hand, his eyes turning black.

Mouthing a _Stop_ to him.

With a sigh Josh sank back onto the sofa and decided to keep his mouth shut.

What the heck! Shall these vampires see how to get that handled! He thought.

"So. Again! Donna, tell us please!" Aidan looked over to her again and she nodded.

"So, let´s repeat. Henry, please try to find this man! When you have convinced him to accompany with you…"

"Should be no problem to compel him…", Henry mumbled between his teeth. One of the typical vampire skills.

"You shall _convince_ him, Henry, not compel him! We don´t have any need of a man snapping out of control in the wrong moment. Either he works together with us or not! Then we have to search for another solution, Henry!" Aidan knitted his brows in annoyance.

"Don´t tell me anything about _snapping out of control_, Aidan! Will I have you to remind of…you know what!" Henry gave back with a low voiced hiss, hinting at the fact how fatally wrong Aidan´s trial went, to compel two young women into allowing a feeding by a terribly disfigured vampire.

Aidan looked at Henry. Then he turned his attention back to Donna.

She nodded and smiled slightly.

"The mortician has to un-dug Sally´s corpse and will have to transport him into Josh´s home after I did the primary preparations on her…"

"Primary pre…parations?" Josh sounded…irritated. What the heck did she mean by this?

"I have to do a ritual to prepare her body for the transfer.."

"To my home?" Josh added.

"Yes and no! More exactly: for the transfer of her soul into her body. The body has been separated from her soul for a longer period and won´t be in the…mood…, maybe, to accept it back. By this it´s equal to transplant an organ from a foreign donor. If I don´t do this, it would be possible that her body will fight off her soul as an intruder and all what we have planned so far will fail…"

"But…But it´s _her_ body and _her_ soul!" Josh protested. "Unless there are a lot of orphan souls drifting around, waiting for the first body to take advantage of and switching back into life!" He shook his head. "And I really don´t have any need for any friggin´ souls taking possession of my home. One Reaper, haunting Sally and her/our home, is way too much alone. Not to talk about half of hell taking a vacation from roasting!" Josh cursed.

"I use White Magic! That, what you´re referring to is black magic! Calling upon any dark soul to appear in our world by using a freshly died body! That´s what people did and do when they want a demon to come into our world to serve them. Giving him a vessel in which he can run around and doing hell´s work, hidden in a mortal body! But that´s not what I´m going to do, Josh! For heaven´s sake no!"

"Yup…you said something about a soul-to-body transfer…" Josh mumbled absently while his mind was turning over and over the weirdest imaginations of ghosts haunting him and Aidan eternally. Maybe Aidan was still haunted by the ghosts of those who he had killed over the centuries. Who knows?

"So, when I have prepared Sally´s body for her soul, the mortician will have to transport her to her home! This is of an immense importance because only there I´ll be able to stabilize her soul into her body. The house is a kind of known shelter to her. Will give her protection when the forces of the Limbo will try to keep her off and pull her back into the Limbo. Only when I can call her soul back into her former body, I will be able to release her soul from the prison and the fetters of her corpse…"

She stopped when she saw the expression of disbelief and a hint of fear in Josh´s face.

"Forces…of…Limbo? What forces?" Josh stuttered and he felt his heartbeat speeding up.

"Did you forget what Henry told about the power he felt behind Sally? The power that seemed to control her and holding her into its grip?"

Josh shook his head no. Damn. They were about to go into a fight beyond imagination…

Worse than the fight he had with the other werewolf.

"There are strong forces which will try to get her back because the Limbo never gives in out of free will. The less when it comes to rob a soul out of purgatory. And if Sally has pulled the Reaper with her, he will seek revenge because his appearance on earth meant that he himself was a kind of servant or under a devilish contract…"

"You mean…this…this Reaper has a contract with hell…I mean…like an employee that he has to…OMG! That he has to deliver souls into the pits of hell!?" Josh grabbed for his forehead with one hand and it didn´t calm him down when he felt that his entire forehead was dripping with cold sweat. Mercifully he was still sitting on the sofa so that he won´t touch ground. Fainting in front of two vampires and a witch or shaman woman…the last thing that he needed to happen right now! He sighed, wiped his head and tried to concentrate on a point behind Donna, simply to fix his sight.

He gasped with effort.

And this…this Reaper thing had walked in and out of their home like he was part of the family.

Vampires could be locked off or could be uninvited and they simply would burn down to ashes when they tried to stay.

Not so this Reaper.

The exorcist had tried to keep dark forces off the house and to seal Sally in by using salt as a barrier.

"Exact!" Josh heard her answer like from far away. His heart was pounding in his ears with the force of a hammer. He twitched when he suddenly felt a cool hand on his wrist. A breath like a cool stream of air and light as a feather stroke over his face from beside.

"Relax, Josh…relax…you won´t have to go through this alone…we are with you!" Aidan assured him with an extremely calm voice. Josh turned his face, bent back his head to look at Aidan who sat directly beside him.

"Don´t…don´t you try your vampire tricks on me…" Josh whispered in protest but his voice trailed off. To tell the truth, he was glad to have such a strong creature like a vampire right at his side. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a mere second, simply to collect his inner self. Then he opened them again.

The seat beside him was…

…empty.

Damn. Did he hallucinate now? There had been…

"Aidan…? Aidan? Where are you?"

Hectically he looked around. What he saw gave him some kind of shock. There was no Aidan. Nor a Donna. Nor Henry!

Damn! They had left him all alone. Where were they all gone to? Had he missed the time for leave and he now was alone in the strangely dim light of Donna´s back room? He tried to rise from the seat and found himself tied to it.

Ties?

What ties?

Josh stared at his hands in disbelief where thick leathery manacles nailed him to the roughly made chair. This he had seen before.

In the cellar where the vampires had put him into a large cage for a deadly combat.

"He! Get me out of here! GET. ME. OUT!" he shouted with no effect other than his panic stricken voice was thrown back from the walls.

Josh turned his head as far as possible to find out what the fuck was going on and why he was kept here. But the room had no similarity to the cage or the pit fight room.

Josh started to shout for help, then he switched to cursing when no one answered. He was going to be hoarse and when he was willing to give up, he heard a movement out of the corner of his ear. That was strange.

From the far wall of the room appeared a thing…creature…entity or what it was so ever.

Josh could barely make out what it was until it reached his seat. A foul smelling stream of air touched his face when the thing bent over him. Josh tried to bend back his head as far as the seat and his ties allowed it. Which wasn´t so much of space. He tried not to inhale.

"What do you want from me?"

He got no answer. Instead the creature bent deeper and extended a long hand with razor sharp claws.

"Ouh! The wolf can speak! How interesting! Like the Grimm tales. What do you expect me to do with you, ha?"

The claw scratched over his face and he felt burning heat when the line ran down from his temple to his lower jaw. He groaned. Warm liquid began to drip down his face side.

The claw was pulled back and the thing licked the blood from the tip of it.

"Ah, the blood is delicious! I really don´t know why your friend Aidan found it so distasteful that he chucked up!" A roaring laughter let the walls shake.

"What are you? A hell´s version of a vampire?" Josh spat at the thing.

The answer was a loud growling.

"I´m gonna get to feed onto your very life essence!" the thing laughed and growled in exchange.

"You won´t! My blood doesn´t fit to vampires!" Josh shouted into the face directly in front of him.

"I´m no common vampire!"

"What are you THEN?" Josh tried to move with no effect. The leather manacles cut into his wrists when he tried to step backward with the seat.

"I´M. THE. REAPER."

The voice threatened to overwhelm his hearing when the voice roared up to the invisible ceiling that was hiding behind wavering reddish fog.

"AND. YOU. ARE. TO. PAY. FOR. SALLY´S. BETRAYAL!"

Josh stared sat the thing and suddenly he saw the black hair and the pale slim face with the dark eyes behind the rotten mask of flesh.

Seconds before the hand drove down with preternatural speed and the claws hit his chest.

Burning pain beyond imagination.

Worse than anything he had known before. When the claws ripped his chest open, going deep into his intestines, the blood gushed out in a thick stream like water from a broken tank. Josh screamed and screamed and the laughter let his ears burst. On top of the claw he saw his beating heart, dangling from it like meat from a hook…

"Josh! JOSH…! JOSH!"

A hand slapped him into the face. Anything grabbed his shoulders and a pale face appeared right in front of his eyes.

Josh did, what he still could…

He screamed in panic, tried to ward off the claws that grabbed for his shoulders, his face. He was an empty shell. Empty of all blood and large dark pools were spreading under him, under his broken chest and belly. Black liquid, thick and with the smell of iron.

"JOSH! JOSH! Come on!" A voice shouted into his semi deaf ears. "Josh! Wake up! Or whatever you´ll do to come back to us!"

Josh went on with screaming. His heart was racing with fear. His arms rose and he tried to ward off the claws that were grabbing into his shoulders. A four handed monster. Claws on his shoulders, claws that grabbed for his legs when he kicked into anything that was at his feet.

"STOP!"

A female voice.

SALLY!

Sally! She was calling for him! NO! She was a monstrous thing now. Get away! Get away! " Get away from me! Let me be! Le´mme be!"

"JOSH! JOSH, wake up!"

He fought for his very life, fought against the claws, against the force that tried to keep him down.

Anything hit him in the face. Hard. Cold. Clawing for his temples. His head. His face. He gasped with fear, fought for breath and his breath came in rasping gasps.

"JOSH!" Anything shook his head with controlled force and he forced his eyes open.

Monsters above him and he screamed.

Black eyes and fangs.

_I´m no common vampire!_

Reaper! The Reaper. He was going for his blood, now, that he had ripped out his heart from his chest. His heart wasn´t enough for the Reaper. He wanted all of him! God, he was still dead. Dead. Dead.

The words echoing in his mind like thrown back from a wall.

"JOSH! JOSH!" The Reaper screamed his name in wrath. Call anybody by his name and you have power over him!

"What the fuck is going on with him? Looks, like he´s going right into a seizure. Or involuntary muscle spasms.", Aidan shouted over to Donna. He bent over Josh, grabbed for his arms and Henry grabbed for Josh´s feet. Together they tried to fix him on the ground without hurting him, preventing Josh from getting hurt by himself.

"Okay, keep him down! Until he´ll relax... Does anyone have any clue what´s going on with him?" Henry asked while he pressed Josh´s twitching feet to the ground. Aidan saw how Josh´s eyes opened to narrow slits. He gasped hard, his breath fast and rasping and when Aidan felt the muscles under his hands relax a bit, he stroked with one hand over the sweaty temple.

"It´s okay, Josh...all okay...relax...calm down...you´re safe in here..."

Josh gasped, tried to fix the pale oval above him with his burning eyes. With much effort he opened them wide and stared into the face above. Anything hard was beneath him and when he gasped, a cushion was placed under the back of his head.

"Josh, my God, what did you do?" Aidan looked at him, his concern clearly written in his vampire face.

"Do...dunno..." he mumbled helplessly.

His eyes strolled around and he saw Henry at his feet. The young vampire watched him with his eyes narrowed, the brows knitted. His hand went for a pulse at the ankle. Then he made one or to steps, half on his knees, that brought him nearer to Josh´s head.

"Josh! What happened?" He felt for the pulse point at the throat, found it fast but regulary.

"I..I don´t know...I...Where am I?" Josh mumbled and he tried to lift his head but let it sink again with a moan when the world around him wavered.

He had been in a large hall, full of reddish fog...

"You´re at Donna´s. Her back room! Do you remember what happened?" Henry asked.

"Nope...I...I was on the seat..."

"You were standing beside the table. I saw how your face went pale and then you suddenly fell to the ground. Looks, like you fainted...and then the spasms came..." He looked concerned. "It looked like you were going straight into an epileptic seizure...Did this ever happen to you before?"

"I don´t suffer from epilepsy...never ever. I...I don´t know what the heck is going..." Josh stared at Henry, at Aidan, his face torn with disbelief.

"I think I know what happened, guys..." Donna mixed in suddenly from the other side of the table.

"What?" came out of three mouths at the same time.

"Josh was so upset and full of fear. Near panic. And this is it what the Reaper took advantage of. You were weakened, an open gate for an attack. The reaper attacks when he feels weakness on anybody...it´s his chance to fight against us. Sally has committed suicide, so to say, into the Limbo. When she was connected to the Reaper then she had pulled him with her into the pits of Limbo. I think he´s very angry, raging to be correct. And he can´t go on in our world..hunting and shredding ghosts to suck them into the Limbo. Sally kinda destroyed it and now he seeks revenge for this.."

"And...and you´re thinking...he´s gonna take his wrath out on us? And his focus is always...on the weakest of us?!"

"Pulling at the weakest link of the chain is what will promise the most success...And you have been so full of fear, Josh, that he took his aim on _you_ in this very moment." Aidan spoke out his thoughts when he helped Josh to turn over on his right side. Josh was lying on the rug, his arms beside his body, his legs outstretched in angles. He sighed when he rolled over onto his right side and Aidan laid a hand on his temple;

"Okay, tell me when you´re ready to stand up..."

"Guess...I...I´ll make it back onto the seat...if you´re giving me some support..." Josh mumbled, but his voice sounded a bit ashamed because of his momentarily weakness. He turned his head and aimed for the seat.

"Okay..."

Without effort Aidan shoved his arms under Josh´s shoulders, pulled him in an upright position and pulled him up on his feet. Josh stood, his hands clung to Aidas forearms, wavering a bit but he was standing on his own feet. A success to what had happened only moments before.

Josh crawled over to the chair and let himself fall into it. He laid his hands on his thighs and sighed, a deep gasping sound. He looked up into the circle of people around him.

"Who´s gonna be next in the row for a Reaper attack?" Aidan asked.

"The next one who will show weakness..." Henry threw in. "...he tried on me when I was weakened after my...imprisonment. I had been in the bathroom, going for some water. I had been so thirsty and call it, my circulation was down, I almost fainted and then the visions came..."

"Hm, after what occurred to Josh, I have my doubts about being it a vision. It definitely was an attack, nothing less and nothing more. Next trying in the row would be Aidan, if he gives himself any weakness...The Reaper searches for opportunities to attack when anybody is kinda open for it...by any means." Donna explained, her face not only thoughtful but concerned.

The Reaper was turning everything upside down when it came to expect what he would be going to do. Obviously Sally´s committed ghostly suicide by shredding herself had pulled him into the Limbo with her. They hadn´t been witness to what had happened in her home, so they only could speculate. All her experience with the paranormal probably wasn´t enough to come to a simple solution. All looked much more complicated as they had thought when she decided to take up the challenge. Much more difficult. She had assumed that with a bit of magic and an old necromancer ritual she would easily call Sally´s soul back into this reality.

She had reckoned without the host until the Reaper came into the game.

"I´m not weak, neither physically nor mental!" Aidan protested and his face was torn with anger, his fangs itching to fall. His eyes were on the edge to turn black.

"You will have any weakness, Aidan. Believe me! None is flawless! And he will find your weakness, for sure. As sure as the Amen in the church!"

"I have no weakness, Donna!" Aidan insisted with a barely hidden growl.

"You´re a vampire since some 257 years! Don´t tell me you never failed! No one can! As dearly as you´ll ever try...He will get you on a point you would expect to be the last of all possibilities. Any, you never would expect, Aidan. I don´t want to be rude to you, but when it´ll happen, don´t forget my warning..."

"I´ll keep it in my mind, Donna!" he closed shortly and his voice sounded a bit cynical.

Donna shot him a view, then she decided to turn her attention onto Josh who sat in the chair, his head resting on his hands, his elbows drawn on his knees. His face looked tired and desperate. His thoughts turning over and over again.

What would become of poor Sally if they were going to fail because of the strength of this damn Reaper? What if?

There could be no _IF._

When they ever had tried anything with full force, with all power of will, then it had to be this!

For sure! One could say that Sally was only a ghost and who on earth does care about ghosts? Ghosts were meant to be nasty, bothering, in the most simple case a thing one better was to forget about. Or they were dedicated to be seen by people with mental diseases or being font of superstition.

Call it what you want; ghosts belonged to the world of fantasy and medieval ages. Not to the contemporary reality...

Sally was worth like everyone else.

Sally was Sally and not a mindless, useless anything.

He would not have gonna lose Aidan. Out of the same reasons. Because Aidan was, against all odds, his friend. And Sally was his friend, not his girlfriend, but a friend like a person you really like and a person you care for.

Josh thought this over and suddenly he mentioned that Aidan was watching his face. It seemed his friend was reading in it like in an open book. Maybe. They both had worked and lived together long enough.

And I bet, Aidan is understanding me way better than my Godfather does, Josh thought, thinking about his father who was a psychologist and always tended to understand his son and his problems out of a medical point of view. How often had his father let hang out the doctor? Not every problem was to be solved by medical analysis.

Especially not the one they were going to solve now...

What was going on and what was going to come, was far beyond any scientific explanation.

Josh sighed and turned to Henry who watched him with an concerned expression.

"You gonna be okay?" Henry asked. He felt respect now for the man/werewolf who had gone to lengths to save him. Twice. And he felt a bit of responsibility for him. Being kind of protective.

"Henry, you talked about a mortician...a new one in town..."

"Yes. I´ve heard of him...among ours. I only hope he won´t work together with Mother..."

"How are you gonna find him?"

"Don´t know exactly. I´ll have to search for his burial service..."

"That can take days, Henry! Days we don´t have...that´s the friggin shit!"

"Did any of you guys ever hear of internet research?" Donna shook her head.

"I have to confess, I don´t have much experience with computers in general..." Henry mumbled. "Lack of possibility. I had to hide too much time to do research or any training..." he whispered to Josh who nodded in response.

"I have a laptop at home, we will do it at home...I´m gonna help you, Henry..."

"Okay, maybe it´s better when we all go home and Josh will help me searching for this man..", Henry suggested.

"Good idea. Please search this man and when you have found him, call me. Then we´ll talk about how to go on."

"Okay, Donna. Thank you for your help meanwhile..." Aidan smiled slightly. He shot Josh a view when Henry stood beside him when Josh rose out of the chair.

"You can walk? Strong enough or shall I..." Henry whispered, offering his hand if needed. He felt much better since he had gotten blood and had slept a lot, due to the large amounts of morphine he had gotten. The slight pain in his chest was almost gone and there was only a hint of a pulling when he did move. The abrasions on his wrists and ankles were gone. Healed faster than the wound in his torso.

Josh shook his head.

"I´m okay, Henry. Thanks. Let´s go..." Josh directed to the door with a nod of his head.

They left the room and went for their cars.

Sleet was covering the street and in the light of the lamps small grains of snow fell. It meant that the ground was going to freeze soon. The air felt much colder now and a strong wind blew from north.

"That´s the last thing we gonna need! Friggin snow! Digging Sally up...kick it in the drain!" Josh cursed when he kicked at the sleet with his boot.

"The mortician will..."

"So far we´re gonna find this guy. Henry has only a vague idea about him..." He turned to Henry; "Did you at least get a name? Any name? Without so much as a name we can search until world ends!"

"They called him Maxwell or...wait Maxim..."

"Maxim! Fine! Really fine!" Josh barked. "Half Russia for selection! Every second Russian guy is named Maxim. Maxim Gorki. Maxim Romanow. Maxim Sergey Somethingkowski..." Josh was gaining momentum until Aidan stopped him.

"Shut up! You´re talking bullshit!" Aidan grunted at him. He hoped that Josh´s mind hadn´t been damaged by the Reaper´s attack. He had seen people, being more tough, going mad under the circumstances. When he saw that Josh shut his mouth he nodded and looked at Henry;

"Are you sure to some certain degree what his name is? Otherwise Josh will be right about the time frame we would need to go through every burial service in whole Boston and vicinity! Any clue?" Aidan´s voice was much more calm than Josh´s. Pressure won´t do when it came to activate vague memories. In humans and vampires.

"Uhm...I´m pretty sure his name is Max. Simply Max. No surname. Alas." Henry sighed.

"Okay. That´ll do. Josh can start a search for morticians with the name. We know, he´s new in the business so he may use some advertisings to lure in clients...If not in the phone books then in the web..." Aidan smiled a bit relieved.

"Would _you_ search the web when it comes to bury a beloved one?" Josh disagreed.

"If you need to look on the price...yes! Not everyone is left with much money when anybody dies" Aidan countered.

He opened the door of his car, leaning over the roof;

"Josh! How do you feel? Safe enough to drive or want you take the passenger´s seat?" he offered.

"And what about my car?" He directed to the other side of the street where he had parked his own car. "I have my doubts that Henry can drive it home..." indicating the fact that Aidan´s son probably never took driving lessons. He had been hiding eight decades and during World War 1 it hadn´t been common that soldiers drove cars.

"I can drive, Josh!" Henry watched him with a frown. He was old, but not that old that he only rode horses.

"What? A carriage or one of those Amish horse drawn buggies?" Josh spat at him with a grin. His voice was annoying.

What the friggin shit was going on with his human friend, Aidan thought.

Henry tried not to take up the challenge. Stay calm, he ordered to himself. Josh had gone through a terrifying experience...

"I got driving lessons when I was in the Army...though I don´t drive much, but it would be enough to get your car home sound and safe..." Henry smiled. "Maybe you better drive with Aidan cuz you had been really shaken currently..." He suggested with a convincing smile. And simply to be safe, he added; "You had been hurt yourself and you seemed to have overexerted yourself. You did so much for us, Josh...now take a little rest and let me help you with this..."

"Kay...kay..." Josh mumbled; "...but don´t you dare to take advantage of it!"

"How should I? Go on, Josh. Give me the keys. When we´re driving home yet, there will be more time for the research...There isn´t much time left as I see...Sally needs us and she needs us fast...!"

Josh entered Aidan´s car, took the passenger´s seat and Aidan started the engine, Josh tired not to look over to Henry who was going to drive his car. What the heck am I gonna give my car to a hundred something years old vamp guy? Josh tried to ignore the fact and concentrated on what was going on with the traffic in general. Not being concentrating on what Henry would do with his car. Shortly before they reached their home, Josh couldn´t resist to look back but found Henry driving into the street with his car unharmed.

He sighed with relief when Aida turned off the motor. The vampire shot him a look and Josh shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of innocence.

"What? What´s up, Aidan? I didn´t criticize your son´s driving skills..." He tried to hide the fact that he had been all alert all the way back. Expecting to hear any noise from behind when his car got damaged. Josh knitted his brows. The more when Aidan´s face split with a grin. He all too well knew how overly nervously Josh could get when it came to things going out of the normal track. Especially when it had to do with neatness and scrupulous cleanliness.

"WHAT?"

"I´ve said nothing, Josh" Aidan gave back.

Knuckles knocked at the side window and Josh turned his head, wound down the window and keys were dangling in front of him when Henry bent down with a smile and reached Josh´s keys inside.

Unintentionally a sigh escaped Josh´s lips and he cleared his throat to hide it. Henry avoided to react to it.

Half an hour later Josh, Aidan and Henry were sitting in the living room on the large couch. A laptop was placed on the table in front of them and Josh tried several options on the search machine.

"okay...put Max in and add burial service and Boston..." Aidan suggested.

Josh did and the computer offered several results.

"Hm, not the best of all..." Josh mumbled when he opened sites, read through them and closed them again.

"Maybe enter it into advanced search and add _new_ to it or _newly opened._"

"Hm, any clue? Don´t play up your role as an old guy, only because you´re somewhat older than me!",Josh grunted when he switched to advanced search.

"Somewhat?" Aidan looked at Josh, "I´m some _two hundred twenty something_ years older than you!" he pointed out the fact that Josh was thirty years old, not 257.

Age was always a reason for a banter between them since they moved in together.

Josh typed and tried again.

He almost jumped and the seat of the couch teetered when he directed to the screen excitedly.

"That´s it! It´s him! We have him!" he shouted and his voice went an octave higher.

"Him? Do you still know him, Josh?" Aidan asked and took a more closer look. Josh directed to the screen. His finger trembling with excitement.

"No, I dunno him! But I guess this is the right one, man!" He looked at both vampires with an expression of expectation. Tell me, I´m good, man!

Henry smiled.

"Okay, give me the address please, Josh..." Henry gave a sheet of paper to Josh who wrote the address he had found in the web.

"That´ll do, Henry...and please...be careful! Take care of yourself! If those other guys are related to Max...I mean...the other vampires..."

"I´ll find out...I´ll be back as soon as possible. A burial service should be available round around the clock!"

Josh nodded, not totally convinced.

Henry put on his jeans jacket, put the dark hood over his head and waved a short good bye as he left the house.

"Will he manage it?" Josh asked.

"I think so! You can trust him, Josh!" Aidan repeated what he had said once before.

"I know. I do...otherwise I won´t have risked so much to get him free..." Josh wiped through his roughly arranged hair.

_tbc_


	8. Chapter 8

_Chapter 8_

_...you can´t immerse your soul into darkness and raise untainted_

The air was cold when Henry walked down the streets. He knew Boston out of his mind. No wonder when he had lived here since decades. Nobody who was going to see the young face that was half hidden under the hood, would imagine that he met a man being almost one century old. Henry had hardly been twenty years old when he was turned vampire.

It took him some twenty minutes until he would reach the address which Josh had researched. Henry kept his head down against the cold wind that was whirling little grains of snow trough the air and into his face when he had to walk against the wind. The night was going to be uncomfortable and he thought at all the poor homeless who were holding out in the streets of Boston. Not long ago he had been in the same situation even though when a vampire could not die from the cold like a mortal. But holding out outside a house in such a winter night wasn´t the thing he preferred. The less any other human. So it had been difficult to get to a meal in these winter nights. Henry slipped under an awning, lifted his head and looked down the street. In the dim light of the lantern he could see a shop window. A lamp was switched on behind a curtain that covered three quarters of the window upwards from the bottom line.

_Max Taylor Funeral Home_ was written on the glass front. White letters in cursive. The letters should suggest some long established company, he thought with a slight smile. Funeral services were a business which needed confidentiality and empathy. Handling with the dead and the bereaved persons was a difficult thing. And this Max Taylor had his business opened a short time ago.

Henry stopped in front of the large glass door that had a wooden frame, made of dark oak. It added the sight a hint of graveness. He breathed deeply, pulled back his hood and knocked on the door after he had tried the doorknob. For sure at this time a door to a company was opened only on request. Even this area of Boston wasn´t free from crime.

He knocked again and after a few moments a shade appeared in the dim lighted room, coming out of an office in the back of the room.

A young man in his twenties opened the door for Henry.

He didn´t smile. Smiling in a case of death could be mistaken. His voice was low and calm, creating an atmosphere of trust and reliability.

"Good evening, Sir..." he greeted him and extended a hand; "What can I do for you?"

"I´m gonna need your help, I guess..."

"Of course...any time everybody needs my help and be certain, I may look young, but I´ve learned my service from my father. You will be very satisfied, Sir..." Max smiled invitingly and directed into the office.

Henry looked down on the wooden threshold, then looked into the face of the mortician. Max seemed to take his hesitation for those of a grieving family member, hesitating to enter a burial service bureau for the first time out of reluctance. To handle with the fact of a loss was never easy. Max knew this. So he tried to reassure Henry by a;

"Please come in, Sir. It´s late but I´m available 24 hours..." Henry smiled sadly and crossed the threshold, now that he had been invited. Max directed to a large table of oak wood with leather chairs. "Please sit down..." Max surrounded the table and sat down on the opposite side.

"What can I do for you, Sir?" Max folded his hands in front of his chest, leaned forward and watched Henry full of expectation.

"I have a job for you, Mr. Taylor..."

"Call me Max please."

"Fine. Max I need your help...friends of mine had a friend, a woman. She died two years ago and they want to bury her on another place...And I think you would be the right one to do such a request..." Henry began, testing uncertain waters.

He had to find out if this Max was working for the Family or if he was an independent business man. Comes out like a detective investigating a case of membership in the mafia. La Familia it was called by the members. And the vampire society had made up mafia like structures over the time. The leaders, the whole community up to Bishop would had been a corrupt cop, turning law in his hands like butter for his own gusto. Pretending to keep off the problems from the family. Since Bishop was gone it became more difficult to hide cases of death from the eyes of the forensics.

Henry studied the face of the man vis-à-vis.

"Do you have any references for me, Max? I mean...I have no experience which such services and..." he began. He knitted his brows. "My friend is still in grief so he begged me to help..." Henry added with a slight smile. "Any customers I probably know..."

"I´m new in the town since seven months, but I have a lot of customers. You may understand that I can´t give you any addresses. Confidential."

"Of course, I know.." Henry smiled, "I beg your pardon...now...let´s come to the business."

"You mentioned a re-burial. Transfer to another place and cemetery."

"Yes...kinda. Mrs. Malik is buried on the central cemetery and my friend would like to set her nearer where he lives. He lives outside of Boston on a farm. There´s a small cemetery in the church yard of the small town...I guess you can understand his wish, Max."

"Of course. I can make you and him an offer. Mostly we do the digging up and, depending on the state of the coffin a transfer in the origin coffin if possible, otherwise we have to rebury her into a new one. When you mentioned she passed away two years ago..." Max spread his hands over the table; "...then maybe she´ll be in an acceptable condition and no problems will rise..." he suggested.

Rebury a passed away in a new coffin was something, most of the relatives weren´t glad with because of additional costs. So sometimes the unearthed person was cremated to make use of an urn which was cheaper than a new coffin.

"When do your friend want to move Mrs. Malik?"

"As fast as possible."

"I would need two or three days to get the legal permission to dig up the mortal remains and transfer them to another place." Max explained. Law restricted exhumationss to a permission or a warrant by a judge like in a case of criminal investigation. No one could simply dig up a buried person.

Henry smiled to himself when he heard how the mortician avoided the word dead with paraphrases like mortal remains, passed away and others. Mortals, in difference to vampires seemed to have problems with handling with the dead. Especially calling it by the name.

Time to check his business connections...

"Uhm, I got your address from a good friend of mine...John Witherspoon. He´s a lawyer and works for Ms. Suren. He recommended you as a very discrete one and having a good service..." Henry laid the bait, waiting for him to bite. His tone kept casually when he threw in Suren´s name.

He looked into Max´ face, listening for his heart beat when the mortician answered. Would his heart rate speed up, then it meant he was going to hide something.

"Sorry, I don´t remember neither Mr. Witherspoon nor Ms. Suren. Maybe they were clients of my father..." Max shook his head no.

"I don´t think so because he definitely mentioned you. Maybe he got a recommendation from a friend of him..." Henry answered with a smile. "How matters? In any case it seems to be a good one." The heart rate of Max kept steady. He didn´t start to sweat or give off the scent of stress hormones. Max seemed to be honest.

The reaction of Max showed that he didn´t have business connections with the Vampire family. So maybe Mother had found another mortician for her special requests.

Henry tried to relax, now that Max Taylor had proved himself to be free of the dangerous connection to the Boston vampire family. He leaned back and let out a sigh.

"Okay… I agree with you that Ms. Malik´s corpse will be in a relatively good condition. So my friend wouldn´t have additional costs due to the transfer, I guess. How much, do you think, will a transfer within Massachusetts cost?"

"Hm…digging up plus two additional men for the lifting plus the transport itself…I think some 700 dollars…" Max suggested and saw how Henry´s facial expression sank.

"Uhm…pretty much. 700 bucks! Uhm, my friend thought about some 400 dollars. I didn´t know it would be such prize." Henry played the somewhat shocked man. He had expected much more to pay really. Normally such transfers took some 1000 dollars or more, depending on the effort and the distance. Max seemed to be in the situation that he had to earn money and so he had set up a lower cost´s level than usually.

"And you gonna need some three days for a legal permission? I didn´t expect this. My friend wants to move tomorrow. He´s in a hurry…Isn´t there…" Henry bent forward, his eyes turning darker; "Any possibility to speed the process up, Mr. Taylor?" He let his voice sound innocent, pretending to be the good friend who had no knowledge and was simply interested to make things going for a grieving friend.

Like by coincidence he moved his gaze until he fixed Max´ eyes with his now bled black ones. By this gaining control over the mortal. To test out how receptive Max would be for his compelling skills, he smiled slightly and ordered;

"Give me your left hand, Max…" His voice low and with the dark timbre. His order was silly but a simple test as weird as it was. Henry had to know how much control Max would allow and where his resistance began. Some mortals were resistant to a vampire`s compelling skills.

Max wasn´t. He smiled and reached his left hand to Henry who took it, his fingers felt for the pulse point at the wrist and he answered Max questioning view with studied casualness.

"You should try to relax a bit, Mr. Taylor…take some more time for you…" His voice had fallen back into the tone he had used when he had been a medic in WW1, caring for a wounded soldier. The reaction showed him that Max had swallowed the bite.

"Uhm…guess you know, I mean…I´m new in the business and I would like to relax more. Alone for my wife and my child, but ya´ know how this is… Much work and I have to start the thing running, making myself known in the city first…It´s not so easy nowadays." He sighed with a smile and Henry let him go. His hand sank back on the warm oak surface of the table. His eyes cerulean again.

"Yeah, I know…business is hard today…" he answered casually.

The man had mentioned a wife and a child. Okay. People with family were mostly full of responsibility and normally they cared for them what gave them a level of socialized behavior. Max was young but he seemed to be open-minded and by now Henry had found nothing what lead him to be mistrustful.

"Okay. To come back onto your question…I barely can speed up the process for the needed permission. I have no influence at the office. Normally a transfer isn´t requested so fast and in such a short time…" He sounded thoughtful and Henry took advantage of this.

"Listen, my friend is really in a hurry. His former house is sold over and he has to leave within two days! Max, I would be very thankful if there´s anything you can probably do for him. That´s the reason why I came to you and didn´t go to another mortician. You were exactly recommended for fast deliverance and trustworthiness. The very special thing I had in mind when I searched for a funeral service."

Unregistered by Max, the eyes of Henry had turned black again, his pupils filling the whole space between his lids with the soft, long lashes. He kept his smile steady not to frighten Max. He wanted to convince him, so that Max would have the good feeling he was going to do something for his customer out of his own intention and his free will. When it would come to dig up Sally´s corpse and place her where Donna wanted her to be, instead of driving her directly over to another cemetery, he needed Max acceptance instead of blind and manipulated obedience. They needed help, not a dumbfounded servant . The task was too risky for simple manipulation. If Max woke out of the spell amidst anywhere they would have the hell on their heels.

Henry knew pretty well why Aidan had let him go for this. Bishop so often had complained about the lack of influence Aidan had when it came to manipulate victims. The last case when it had gone fatally wrong, hadn´t been so long ago: When Aidan had compelled two young women into letting Henry drink from them for healing after he got skinned…

Henry looked at Max, caught his view with his eyes and lowered his voice, under-laid with a begging tone.

"Max, this is an extraordinary case of emergency. My friend has no time left and I think there would be no problems rising when you are going to speed that whole thing up. Ms. Malik died in an accident and this was proved by the police, so there´s no hidden crime to be suspected. It´s all okay with her but for the lack of time only… You would make a man in grief a bit more glad now when you´re going to do the service for him without so much as waiting for a legal permission, which you would get finally and anyway. I beg you, Max…Do a grieving man a favor! Please. Josh is suffering enough, alone without any further problems, all these procedures may raise additionally…"

"You mean…you´re gonna say that I shall dig Ms. Malik up immediately, before I´m getting the permission. Uhm…"

"You won´t need a permission, Max! This case of death is clean and the police declared it an accident. She fell down the stairs and died by smashing her head on the basement tiles… You won´t get into trouble if you handle this case discretely for my friend. But you´re gonna make a friend a bit happier." His eyes had bled black, his voice had the compelling timbre but Henry kept begging and friendly with Max, who looked at him which this strange expression in his face as if there was something uncommon. Henry knew these facial expressions in humans. They were always the same when he used his skills. For him it was a proof, that he had the connection he wanted and needed. In case that Max wouldn´t react he could put more force in his words to break through. But now, when he proved Max´ mind, he found it open.

A modern word for what vampires were doing while being in someone´s mind, would be a _brain scan_.

Henry got a bunch full of thoughts and imaginations from Max. There was astonishment, the need to verify in front of himself what Henry suggested him to do and a mix of thoughts about his wife and his daughter. His family´s future. Max´ brain offered him a picture of a nine year old girl with dark brown hair with long curls and smile in the dark eyes. Henry felt the concern for her that Max held. He seemed to care much about the future of his family and it felt honestly.

This man was a good father and husband and for sure it really wasn´t easy for him to establish his company to secure the future. His feelings were equal to those Henry had gotten from Aidan when the vampire spoke about his mortal family in vivid images.

The connection allowed him to deepen the impression he left in Max´ mind. To put too much force into it could drive a human mad about the thoughts he meant to be his own. Once Aidan had tried to convince a police officer that it wasn´t him who killed his father and the man drove mad, committing suicide in the end of the process. Not the intended way it should have ended finally. But crap happens, Henry thought.

Max stared at Henry, heard his words. He saw the black eyes which could be really frightening, but the mixture with the friendly expression in the man´s face softened the feeling of uncertainty and fear to a merely strange feeling. Not threatening, only somewhat strange. He wondered about it but didn´t feel uncomfortable with it.

Henry kept the balance well. Adding a bit of reassuring to steady, that his late client only wanted to make sure that everything was okay and all he was going to do, would be the best for his young family, Henry went on.

"You won´t get into trouble with being fast in this case and I know that you care for your family, Max. All will be okay, Max… and my friend will be a happy man to find such a man who knows what to do right…" Henry smiled and a wave of relief washed over the face of Max. The mortician sighed, leaned back a bit and Henry felt him relax.

"How many men do you need to assist you, Max?" Henry was determined to keep the mortician´s helpers out of the case. No further employees to be involved. No witnesses, no problems!

"Hm, I need two of my employees to get Ms. Malik up from the grave and to transport the coffin…"

"Okay, Max. We will help you! Me and another friend of mine. The fact is…hm…my friend… he´s not broke but the removal of all his belongings is expensive enough and if you would accept our help, he could lessen the financial effort…"

"But you are…" Max protested. He didn´t have the feeling that it was because of the money for him, but this man was no mortician assistant. "I mean…you for sure never have done…"

Henry knew what he was going to bring into the game.

Handling a corpse…

"I have been in war, Max. I have seen worse, believe me. I won´t gonna chuck up in front of the sight and the smell of a corpse!" Henry reassured him and Max nodded. That was no lie now. He and Aidan had been in war and seen worse. Not necessary to tell Max HOW much they had seen and how old they were!

"Okay. But don´t gonna give me any complaints then when it comes to dig her up and carry her around!" Max looked at him and got the impression that this man knew what he talked about. Okay. The question of assistance had been solved so far. Less money for him. But there would be more clients for him in the future. No reason to step back now from the possibility of making some extra money within short time and all of a sudden. The man seemed to be reasonable.

"Okay…I´ll do this for you, Mr. …"

"Durham. Call me Henry simply." Henry smiled his best convincing and innocent smile. Oh yeah! He was really great at smiling. He was hardly to resist. And he knew this pretty well. The effect his smile and smirk had on humans.

"Okay, Henry. For good luck I have free time available tomorrow afternoon. The last burial is at 2:30 pm. So I can prepare the exhumation. We will have to be in a hurry because it becomes dark early in mid December…" Max reminded him.

"I guess my friend will be at the cemetery at 4 pm…" Henry tried to get some time. The later they would start to dig up Sally, the less people would be on the cemetery. And the less people to witness what was going on.

"4 pm…that´s pretty late. It´ll let us only half an hour until its dark totally…" Max didn´t sound happy. "No problem…the front lights of the car will give us light enough. My friend is of Jewish religion and he wants to do some special prayers before we would go to move Ms. Malik into the hearse and to her new resting place. So it would be nice if you let us some extra time and some privacy after we had dig her up…" Henry eyes were bled black again and his voice got the dark, convincing timbre while his face kept friendly.

"Okay. When it´s dark it doesn´t matter anymore…so if you would cope with the circumstances…for me it´s okay. I´m neither afraid of darkness nor cemeteries at night." Max laughed in a low voice and Henry grinned.

The man seemed to be okay, he thought.

"Okay. Max, I will be at the Central Cemetery tomorrow at 3 pm, Max…"

"Okay, I will be waiting for you. Which grave? Not, that we´ll dig up the wrong lady…"

"It´s Sally Malik´s. She died 2010…Field eleven of the yard…"

"Well…" Max wrote the name and the graveyard number on his note block. "I prepare the bill later on, when all is done well, Henry…"

"Thank you so much, Max…we´ll meet tomorrow…" Henry smiled and Max nodded when he accompanied Henry to the door to let him out into the nightly streets of Boston. Behind him, he locked up the door and went back into his smaller back office.

The wind had become stronger meanwhile and little grains of snow were drifting through the air, whirling around and dancing in the light of the street lamps. Henry pulled the hoodie over his head, cuddling himself into the fur lined cloth when he sped up his steps. The night promised to become a cold one and he hoped that the weather wouldn´t become worse tomorrow night. He had spent nights out there when he had no lair, pressing himself into narrow corners of doors or hiding between garbage cans in a court yard, waiting under slim roofs for the morning when the first coffee shops were going to open again. Being a vampire in despair, he even had switched from only drinking blood and water into trying any hot drinks. Over the time he had found out what his body could handle and which not. Coffee, simple black tea, rose hip tea… Henry found out that herbal teas of all kind, which were made of strong scented herbs didn´t do. Some were simply too strong in taste, some ended up with nausea, in the worst case they came back directly. Not so good to chuck up in a coffee bar. But for good luck there was always an excuse of an unknown allergy.

When he had recovered from his torso wounds there had been the scent of feverfew tea lingering in the air, mixed with the remains of garlic. Josh had made pots of it for Aidan to fight his garlic poisoning.

Henry shoved his hands deeper in the pockets of his jacket and sped up his steps. Time to go home where Aidan and Josh were waiting for him.

**Sally´s Resurrection**

The air was cold and wet and they had waited until the last visitors had left the cemetery. When the guard closed the gates behind them, Henry left the car and walked over to him.

„Good evening, Sir..." he smiled at the man and directed to the waiting hearse. „Please open the gates for us. Max Taylor Funeral Home. I think you are informed that we are here to dip up the mortal remains of Miss Sally Malik..."

„Of course. Mr. Taylor called in. It´s all okay, Sir. Not good if any of the visitors gets in sight with the exhumation. I hope you have lights enough...not the best weather for a travel, even not for the passed aways..." The man smiled, sure that Henry was the assistant of Mr. Taylor. No doubts about the upcoming events.

One and a half hour later the grave was open and Aidan and Henry had lifted the corpse onto a plank on the snow covered ground. The wind had gone icy and little snowflakes were whirling through the night.

Josh stared at the human shape that was wrapped into half rotten bandages or sheets. He didn´t want to think about what it was exactly. The smell...no, call it stench...was almost unbearable. Josh bent his head and looked onto the ground. He searched for liquid that was soaking from the backside of the wrapped corpse. He knew that corpses gave off gases and liquids when the cells were dying and dissolved into a mix of body liquids, rotten contents of the gastro-intestinal tract and degradation products. When the skin gave in under the rising pressure inside a corpse, these liquids were bursting through and appeared on the surface or under the corpse.

He directed to the shape that once had been Sally, his finger trembling;

„Donna...uhm, you´re not gonna put this...thing, uhm...her...Sally...on...I mean on her bed at home!?" Josh hoped for a No. Seconds stretched into an eternity.

„I will! I have to, Josh! I have told you..." Donna answered.

Josh´ eyes widened and he felt his hope sinking like a stone in troubled water.

Donna wrapped a head cloth around her head, knotted it behind in her neck and she ignited the candles she had placed around the body

Josh and Aidan looked at the flickering light. Strangely they didn´t go out despite the cold wind that blew through the clearance in the thick bosk that was lying at the southern side of the large cemetery. Grains of snow were drifting through the air when the wind whirled them round instead of letting them fall to the ground.

Josh and his two vampire comrades pulled the hoods of their sweater over their heads. The night was going to become a very uncomfortable one, as if the night itself tried to keep them off their plan.

What they were doing here, was definitely a desecration of a grave, a violation of law if seen with a juridical point of view! Josh had never imagined that he would do such a thing anytime. They were committing a crime whatever reason they would bring up against it. Josh saw that Henry´s face was pure concentration.

„What...what are you doing, Henry?", he whispered to him.

„I´m listening around but we are safe here. No humans around, only a mouse under the bushes." he grinned slightly. „It´s feeding on something..."

„I hope it won´t be any desecrated bones...", Josh grunted. Who knows how often rituals were held on this devastated area of the cemetery. Exactly this kind of area kids preferred when they tried to prove their courage. Or Satanists when they tried to call upon demons...

„Donna? Are you sure...this place is clean? I mean...clean in the sense that no one before did dark rituals here, compromising the place with dark forces!" He had strong doubts; if yes...how large was the chance that they would call upon a demon instead simply preparing Sally´s corpse for her encounter with her long left soul?

„I checked this area before. The place here is innocent, not compromised by dark magic. Otherwise there would be the chance that we would be opening a gateway to hell unintentionally." Donna declared.

„Place yourself in a triangle around. Henry...Josh, go there. Aidan...to the right please..." she ordered. The three of them took the positions Donna wanted them to be on. When everybody was in place, she poured a liquid out of a small pot. It dripped down and hit the bandages of the corpse.

Henry watched closer and he saw that the red liquid created a strange sign onto the surface of the half rotten linen. Maybe it was Egyptian, he thought.

„What is she doing...?" Josh whispered.

Donna lifted her head and looked at him. Josh answered her look with a doubtful expression.

„Shut up, Josh. None of you will be talking while I do this!" she ordered.

Josh nodded silently.

Donna bent her head again and began the ritual.

"Osiris, keeper of the gate. Master of all fate. Hear us. Before time and after. Before knowing and nothing. Accept our offering. Know our prayer. Here lies Sally! Let her cross over!"

She poured new liquid on the corpse. Creating a second sign.

„Osiris, keeper of the gate. Master of all fate. Hear us! We beg for the soul of Sally Malik. Open her body for her Ba. Let us call back her Ba into her body. Accept our prayer, Osiris."

Donna rose from her knees and surrounded Sally´s corpse, her hands forming signs into the air that seemed to be hieroglyphics.

None of the three dared to speak in fear to disturb the ritual by annoying the Egyptian God of the Dead. None of them had ever participated in such a ritual of necromancy.

Donna bowed to the north, painting a sign into the air.

„Osiris, keeper of the river Nile...accept our prayer. Let Sally cross over!"

Donna stepped to the eastern end of the clearing, painting another sign in the air with her hands.

„Osiris, keeper of the east where Re is born every morning...accept our prayer, great Osiris. Let Sally see Re, the master God of eternal life..."

She crossed over to the southern corner, painting a new hieroglyphic into the air.

„Osisris, keeper of the gate. Master of all fate. Hear us. Before time and nothing. Keeper of the river Nile who is the source of all Ankh! Open Sally´s body for her Ba who is travelling in the eternal skiff from the realms of the dead to the realms of the living. Hear our prayer, Osiris!"

Donna sang in an old Egyptian language and walked over to the west corner of the area, where she bent down, painting another hieroglyphic in the air, then she kneeled down.

"O Osiris in the west, the land of the dead, come to me! I am your sister Isis. Arise, arise! Come on my word! Your name is heard now in every district. Thee call with me to them in the right time!"

Then she rose and came back to the corpse. Singing old verses in Egyptian language. She waved with her hands over the body shape.

The candles started to flicker, more than by the icy wind. The flames grew larger and a dim red fog appeared over the wrapped body.

Josh gasped when the red fog was gliding over the corpse, spreading to all sides until it covered the whole body and the surrounding ground.

"Osiris, keeper of the gate. Master of all fate. Hear us. Before time and after. Before knowing and nothing. Accept our offering. Know our prayer. Here lies Sally! Let her cross over!" Donna repeated. "Let her Ba travel back into her body, protected by Ka... And..." she poured more of the red liquid over Sally´s lifeless shape. "Accept our prayer and our gift. Let Re call her Ba from the west!"

The red fog whirled and formed a shape like a twister and it flickered and began to glow. Josh, Henry and Aidan stared breathlessly at the glowing.

Donna shrunk back, her hands rising in defense and the bottle with the sacrificial offering almost toppled over. Aidan´s hand caught it before it could empty itself.

"Oh no! Not! No! Not that!" she stuttered, her voice rising from excitement. With widened eyes she watched how the red fog was dancing wildly over the ground.

Aidan and Josh knew that something was going wrong.

_The Reaper screamed with wrath when the lips of the witch formed the last words of the preparing ritual on the cemetery. He shouted and whirled around, his shape jumping through the red light._

_"__NO. NO! YOU. WON´T. STEAL. WHAT. IS. MINE!"_

_The Reaper jumped forward, his claws outstretched, grabbing into the red fog and his hands searching for the pumping heart of the witch, who was going to steal what was his since he had possessed Sally. This witch believed she would have a chance against him! Against him, who was the master of all souls in Limbo! How could SHE dare to attack HIM?_

"What is going on; Donna?" Josh´s voice went an octave higher, like every time when he was overly excited. "What is wrong?"

Donna grabbed for her chest, her face became pale and the candle´s flames rose higher until they mixed with the unearthly red glow that was creeping over the corpse and the whole area.

"Donna? DONNA!" Aidan shouted and he wanted to move to her. She looked like she was going right into an heart-attack. Her face was pale and her heartbeat was fast and uneven. He could hear it like he could hear all the heartbeats of the patients at the hospital. A vampire would have made a perfect cardiac monitor on two legs.

Donna warded him back with a wavering of her hands, ordering him to keep his position on the ground.

"We have to help her anyway!" Henry shouted over to him.

Donna´s lips trembled and her body was shaking like in seizures, but she grabbed for the bottle and poured a large amount of the liquid into the wavering red glare.

"Osiris! Keeper of the gate! Osiris in the west! Keep off the eater of Ankh. Help us! For we are sacrificing this offer to you, help us in the name of Re! Let not take the darkness the light of Re from the sky in the east! Accept our sacrifice and help Sally´s Ba ,that not the forces of darkness will tilt her light from the surface of the day in the shape of the God Re who is born by the Goddess Nut, keeper of the east and keeper of the eternal light of Ankh.!"

Her voice rose and she felt an unknown force grabbing for her heart, the seat of her Ka and her Ankh. With all force of her mind she fought the claws back that were grabbing for her heart. She growled and out of her mouth were coming old Egyptian words. Her face was torn with concentration and Aidan, Josh and Henry were helplessly watching the fight that took place before their eyes. They didn´t know what to do to help her. All three of them hoped that her efforts would be enough to ward off whatever was attacking her in an attempt to break the ritual´s force.

With much effort she pressed out:

"Thot, keeper of the world of the dead! Keep the gate locked up against the forces of darkness who try to enter the world of Re! Ka, protector of Sally! Make her strong against the eater of her Ba! The light of the God Re is stronger than the forces of darkness since the very day his Mother Nut has born Re for the first time! Forces of the dark, forces of the night, give way to the force of Re! Thot, protector of the underworld, escort and protect Sally on her travel! We call upon you! Accept our prayer!" Her voice raspy and trembling. She poured more of the liquid into the red fog and the fog became unsteady. It was losing its straight form, the twister like structure dissolved into a cloud that seemed to start drifting with the icy wind. What before had looked like it has had an own will...now it was drifting away with the wind.

_The Reaper screamed with rural force, he was twitching, twisting, wavering when he tried to overwhelm the force of Thot who pulled him off from the gate to the realms of the living. He screamed with wrath when he lost grip of the witch´s heart. It slipped through his claws that became weaker and weaker, losing their strength with which he had grabbed for the heart. The witch began to slip through his hands like fog under the hot rays of the sun. Thot was in front of him and Thot was sheer force. The gate in front of him closed and separated him from Sally who was his._

_The Reaper was slammed into the wall behind and he dissolved into red fog._

_An icy cold storm grabbed him and he was helplessly drifting away._

_The gate fell shut._

Donna fought for breath, she bent down, gasping, her hands resting on her knees. It took her some time to relax before she rose and turned over to Aidan, Henry and Josh ho stared at her with concern.

"Is...is that all okay now...?" Josh dared to ask.

"Yes. He´s gone."

"Who?" Aidan´s voice was uncertain. Full of expectation.

"The Reaper! He...he tried to disturb the ritual! He wants to keep Sally down in Limbo and won´t give way. But this time Thot helped us. He´s stronger...had been stronger this time because I called upon all the old gods! Now...now we can move Sally´s corpse back to her home to complete the transfer of her soul into her body..."

_The Reaper was not willing to give up so easily. Despite the fact that Thot had weakened him by slamming him into the wall of the Limbo which was of pure energy, he was determined to keep Sally prisoner for what she had done to him. She had shredded herself and by this, because his dark energy was connected with hers, he had been pulled back into the place he had escaped from only by the pull of her strong will. Sally was a stubborn, hard headed and free woman in life and so she had become with her death as a ghost. None of these weak and complaining things, shivering, crying and yelling for their door, caught in the world of the living by the weakness of their mind and their incapability to fulfill their life cycle._

_This damn witch, named Donna, had dared to start the resurrection ritual from the hidden _Book ofOsiris_. Thot did ward him off but the ritual meant that she used the ancient Egyptian rite and this meant that he could easily make use of the different concepts of soul and body. The Ba and the Akh, being her soul and her actual substance of her divine soul. Akh could be extracted from the other parts of the soul, even if the being was still alive among the humans._

_Would he be able to get her Akh, then she would be caught in the Limbo forever. It was the same like Christian condemnation!_

_And making use of the ancient Egyptian ritual of resurrection, the witch had delivered Sally to the forces of the ancient gods and goddesses. Her surname itself…Malik….meant to be the Queen in Arabian and also in Egypt the word was common. Either by coincidence or in relation to the origin of her name, the witch had used the preparing rites of Osiris. Call a soul by her name, it´ll give you power over her or deliver her to the gods of her ancestors._

_The witch had managed to ward him off only by the help of these three creatures who surrounded her in the ritual. Two of them had still failed and the third one was to be proved. On being whatsoever on the surface of earth, human or inhuman, was without fault, without weakness. These beings had helped each other until now but if he would be able to make the last one falter and fall, the power of the witch would be broken and he could take possession of Sally´s Akh forever…_

_At any cost._

_In a green and red cloud he drifted toward the large doors of hell. He knew that there the ultimate Master of Hell, his Master, was lingering among the burning souls of the damned. In front of the glowing red doors of iron he hesitated and tried to stabilize his former shape. He could not enter in front of Astaroth in his most weakened self! Astaroth would banish him from the shelters of hell before he even would be willing to listen to him. He had to offer a deal for the benefit he was to gain. Of this he was pretty sure. Everything had its price, even in hell._

_With much effort he stabilized his shape to that of a man with long grey hair and a slender body. Regaining his black hair would cost him too much of his remaining life force. The fight with the witch and Thot´s attack had taken its toll on him, but if he could take possession of Sally´s Akh, he could do with it like he wanted. And if he would grow tired of her, he could deliver her to Ammit, the Devourer of souls. His face lost its shape for a moment when he laughed a devilish laughter, evil enough to be equal to that of the entities behind the heavy doors._

_Demons and devils. Fallen angels. Those who were condemned to the pits of hell eternally._

_The Reaper opened the heavy doors to the pits of hell. They were so massive that even the glare and heat of the fire couldn´t harm, the less melt them. He opened them by the power of his will and in the large hall he had to steady himself for a moment before he moved toward the throne in the center of the hall. The air was filled with the stench of burning flesh and sulfur._

_On the throne he saw an entity which had to be Astaroth himself, the master of hell. Astaroth could be described impossibly. His shape had nothing human and it seemed to change constantly from a barely human form to anything that looked like liquid fire._

_When Astaroth was taking attention of the Reaper he shifted to a semi-human form with a bald head, a bare chest that was colored in shades of grey and blue and short thick arms with claws instead of fingers. His eyes seemed to bulge out his head. Pale and glossy balls, the pupils yellow slits like those of a cat._

_When the Reaper crept to his feet, bowing and scraping, Astaroth began to laugh and his hands clasped onto his thighs, the claws making a scratching noise when they went over the leathery skin._

_"__What do you want, Reaper?" he growled and added a roaring laughter to it that made the walls shake and the flames of hell fire flickering like in a storm._

_"__My Master Astaroth! I want the Akh of Sally Malik!" he answered without hesitation. "She´s mine, my servant, my vessel and cauldron of damnation of the ghosts! I want her Akh to throw it into eternal damnation for she disobeyed. "_

_"__Don´t you know, the netherworld is reign by me and so are the souls!"_

_"__But the witch wants to steal her soul from the thresholds of hell, my Master! Though, if you´ll give it to me, it won´t be lost to the realms of the living. Sally disobeyed, yes, she dared to shred herself! And therefore she has to be punished!"_

_Astaroth laughed again. His claws holding to his enormous and fat belly, the rings of fat were shaking under the roaring sounds that came out of his mouth which was framed by sharp teeth. A wave of stench came out of the gaping hole._

_"__Malik! Malik! Don´t you know that her name is of ancient origin? Why, do you think, has the witch dedicated Sally to the gods of Egypt? Though, if you want her soul, you will have to bargain with Ammit herself!" Astaroth directed to the far corner of the hall and when the Reaper turned his head he saw the entity that has been the most feared one among the Egyptians._

_Ammit had a large upper torso of a leopard with the head of a crocodile, the hindquarters were those of a hippopotamus. One could only describe her as monstrous, terrifying and deadly. She wasn´t called a goddess. She hadn´t been worshipped by the ancient Egyptians but was the personification of fear for she feed from the souls, the Akh. Every soul she fed on was restricted to enter the Aaru and condemned to eternal restlessness._

_The Reaper stared at her when she moved nearer and it was difficult to call her a female entity. Her monstrosity led more to that of a male monster._

_But that didn´t matter now._

_"__You are called Ammit- The Devourer of souls?" The Reaper began and when she was near to him, her height was far higher than that of a human shaped being. The glistening fangs in the mouth bent deeper and he felt a strong pull toward her that grabbed for his soul._

_"__What do you want, Reaper?" her voice was powerful and vibrating with hunger. Was his soul to be devoured? She, call her she, felt darkness swelling in his heart. The stench and taste of vitiosity hung in her nostrils like a cloud of blood. He was corrupt, his heart full of distrust and vengefulness. She hadn´t to ask him for, knowing that his dark desire was a certain soul he was longing for since long._

_He wondered why she knew his name because he hadn´t introduced to her himself. She bent deeper, her enormous crocodile fangs hovering in front of his chest. Ready for the bite._

_The Reaper flinched back a bit. His heart wasn´t up for discussion now. Not now._

_"__I want Sally´s soul, her Akh!" he ordered. He knew that his tone was insisting and maybe he was risking much more than usual._

_Ammit laughed a raw laughter that was more a growling or roaring than anything else. Hell seemed to be a very noisy place as if they had to drown out the screams of the tortured souls which were burning in the fires of purgatory._

_"__Why do you think that you´re having a right to demand a soul?"_

_"__Sally disobeyed and for punishment I demand her soul…she´s to be taken out of Limbo by a witch. And Sally´s soul is mine! Mine!"_

_"__How comes that you´re claiming her to be your property?"_

_"__I had chosen her to be my heir on earth to shred ghosts which deserved to be punished. My Master is Astaroth, the collector of condemned souls. But now a witch is going to steal her soul from Limbo…"_

_"__I knew all too well that you´re connected to Sally and she had pulled you into the Limbo, which you now can´t leave anymore to fulfill your task! Don´t ever dare to lie to me or I will devour on YOUR soul, Reaper!" she hissed and saliva dripped from her mouth, her leathery tongue smelled the air in expectation of this delicious food. His soul was dark like the pits of Stygia and it would give her a real mouth full of life force. Not every soul was real nourishment, but his… Her tongue licked over her lipless jaws._

_Her hindquarters padded the ground and he felt the vibrations that shook the ground which was in steady movement by the heat from beneath. Her leopard fur was glistening in shades of red, orange and yellow in the unearthly light from the fires of hell. She made two steps into his direction, licked her mouth and with a dark voice she finally answered his demand;_

_"__I will give you power over her soul, Reaper. But only on my own benefit. You can have it to play with it, but after three days it´s MINE! If you´ll fail in the attempt to deliver it to me, I´ll take YOURS instead!"_

_For the first time since a very long time the Reaper felt rural fear._

_"__And I won´t devour it after three days, be sure! Your Akh is such a dark one that I would enjoy it bit by bit, night by night. And this will take half an eternity! So don´t forget this! Now…Reaper…do you still want to make the deal, Reaper?" Cat eyes bored into his. Her leopard face moved slightly into a monster like grin._

_The Reaper thought it over and over, But Ammit won´t give him much time until she would retract. His chance stood fifty-fifty. He would have to win otherwise he himself would be lost and gonna dying in a manner much worse than death._

_The choice was his and o the other hand it wasn´t his own._

_Finally he nodded._

_" __I´ll make the deal, Ammit!" He managed an evil grin but he was shitting bricks. He extended a hand toward her but shrug back when he saw the claws._

_Ammit laughed._

_"__Don´t you know, Reaper, that deals in hell are to be sealed with blood?" Ammit added and he nodded slightly. The Reaper extended his hand further and with one paw like foot she scratched over his palm, cutting into the ghostly flesh until blood came._

_Ammit licked over it and then she growled. Such a terrifying noise, that even the Reaper swept back and made it for the door with preternatural speed. Behind him he heard a wall shaking roar and then the heavy glowing doors fell shut with a deep Dong._

Josh was cursing when he bent down and stared at the wrapped corpse on the sleet covered ground. The wind had become stronger and now was blowing from north, adding the cold a further chill.

"Why all had we to take such a cold and stormy night? And why in the woods? Couldn´t this be done in a funeral house, any friggin´ cellar? I mean…" he complained.

"What do you mean, Josh?" Henry whispered in his ear.

"Uh mean…that guy of yours…if he made a deal with you and…"

"He isn´t my guy but just a simple mortician. I or anybody else doesn´t have a special contract with him. He simply is new in the business and I took some advantage of it because he needed the money! He dug up the body officially and did how his client wished; bringing the body to some certain place for a last Good Bye before a re-burial." Henry tried him to bring down.

"I mean, he certainly has a cellar where no one would come in to watch what´s going on…instead of gonna freeze our balls off!" Josh sounded angrily.

"You hadn´t been standing naked in the woods. In difference to the special occasion when you were turning at Full moon and in winter time, Josh!" Henry couldn´t hide a smile and added; "I almost froze MY balls off when I was hanging from that hook in the cellar. You have never been in a vampire storage cellar midwinter the less over weeks. And what shall Aidan say?"

"Some freezing keeps you guys fresh over the time!" Josh countered. Henry didn´t answer but he saw in his face what the vampire was thinking about it. Damn. When he had Henry brought home, his body had been unnaturally warm, not to call it hot, from a damn fever.

"Why is your friend complaining so much about everything?" Donna whispered to Henry.

"Don´t be annoyed, Donna. Please. I know him. He´s okay, but over the last weeks he had so much stress around. He got shot, his friends…we…disappeared and he had a lot of trouble with getting us free again…He´s a pretty good guy…He became a werewolf two years ago and since then his life ran out of track… Josh. I owe him my life. Twice. He gave me shelter when I was almost dead…" Henry responded.

Josh´s head turned around abruptly. He shot a look at Henry and Donna.

"What are you talking about, hm? You´re talking ME?" His voice sounded pissy. His brows were knitted in skepticism.

"Yup! We´re talking about you, Josh! About your role in saving mine and Aidan´s life…" Henry said, speaking the truth. He didn´t feel the urge to hide anything from him. Josh was old enough to have the guts for standing some discussion, although when he was on the edge with his nerves since the last days. There would be time to relax afterwards, when everything would be running fine again.

"I don´t like you guys talking about me like about a little child with no brain!" Josh shot back, his buck eyes on blaze. Henry would have laughed at his excitement when the situation wouldn´t have been so serious.

Why under heaven and on earth were mortals always so afraid of vampires talking about human problems? Had it anything to do with the fact that the difference in age seemed to give them some right to do so? Like teachers talking pupil´s problems.

Josh was a good man, but he definitely needed to relax much more. I should take care of this when we´re through with this shit! Henry thought. He himself has had a lot of stuff to learn when Aidan had him turned into a vampire. Knowledge and calmness were coming with the age and Josh was damn young in relation to him at least, not to mention Aidan. Henry knew, that he had make mistakes too as a newbie. He had been cunning, ambitious and playing high risk when dealing with royalty. His newly won life had looked to him like eternal heaven and fun and he felt invincible until Aidan had banished him from the family. Suddenly his life had turned. From the somewhat selfish and arrogant young vampire into that of a refugee, who was forced to hide from everyone and to hide from all other places where vampires had a lair to be. Hunting, feeding became a problem for a very long time until Bishop was gone and he came into contact with his remains; the orphans.

Henry put a hand on Josh´s shoulder, laid soft pressure into it when he pushed Josh over to the place where Sally´s corpse was still lying on the ground. Beside her was a large plank on the ground and Henry bent down to Sally´s shoulder area, grabbed under them.

"Take her feet, Josh!" he begged for a helping hand. He waited for Josh to do so.

_Something was moving._

_Under the wrappings, where Sally´s hands were, anything moved. Fingers clawing and curling, stretching the half rotten linen with a soft rustling sound._

_Josh´s eyes widened with shock. His hairs stood on end._

_This couldn´t be! Can´t! Sally had…she had…they had only done a preparing ritual, nothing else and now…_

When after a few seconds nothing happened he turned his face upward and looked at Josh who stood at her feet, hesitating and nervously chewing on his lower lip. Josh didn´t look as if he was going to help Henry now.

"Josh? What´s up? Would you please…we don´t have time the whole night long…" Henry urged, his tone still friendly. "C´mon!"

Henry saw that Josh was staring at the corpse, his eyes fixed onto the bandages and the shape of her…former…body.

"Josh!?"

He looked afraid.

"Josh! What´s going on?" Henry tried to sound patiently, but something was definitely wrong with Josh´s behavior.

Josh seemed to wake up from some kind of trance. His head moved and he looked at Henry, his lips moving when he whispered;

"I…I didn´t know…I…what…I thought…thought, that Sally….that she had moved a bit. Her hand…"

Henry stared at him and then at Sally, looked intensely.

There was nothing that was moving to the slightest.

"She does NOT move, Josh! Sally is _dead_. It´s her _corpse_! Josh! Please…" He watched as Josh stepped back a few steps. His eyes wide and his heart beat were hard and fast.

An encounter with the dead to be risen was a hard task for a man, whose only relation to the paranormal was being a werewolf! Josh wasn´t used to witch stuff like Donna.

"Josh…?" Henry looked at him. He didn´t want to push too hard but time was running out and the wind became sharper and small grains of snow added to the chilling effect. Henry hesitated to encourage Josh the hard way because he felt pity for him. This man had saved his life and they had become a kind of friends. Henry was a man who knew whom he could trust and who was worth to stand by ones side.

Josh is simply afraid because of Sally and the events, he thought.

But on the other hand it was of no use to keep him off now because of this. They all had to go through this now, irrespective if they were used to such things or not. And digging up a corpse…not Aidan yet, who was alive but had been starved…and handling with the powers of hell or Limbo, was a thing of which no one would know how it´ll end.

Henry decided to switch to a moderate manipulation to assure Josh in finally acting now. His eyes bled black and his voice got a convincing timbre when also he kept his voice calm, not demanding. He wanted to help Josh but not by compelling him like an unwilling victim.

"Josh!" He got a glance. Okay. "Josh! Sally is still dead and she can´t move now. Not now before the ritual is finished! You put her on the plank and we´ll put her in the car. She won´t harm you! I´m with you, Josh. You know that you can trust me and you will…" He looked directly into Josh´s brown eyes which got a changing expression under the vampire´s influence.

Josh hesitated, then he bent down with a sigh and with shaking hands he grabbed Sally´s wrapped feet area. They lifted Sally onto the plank and used the board to carry her to the waiting hearse. Aidan opened the doors at the backside and Henry and Josh shoved the plank inside.

Josh stepped back and wiped his hands over the sides of his jeans as if he wanted to get rid of something infectious.

"You do not want me to drive in this…this car…" Josh directed to the hearse. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. The smell that emanated from the corpse on the plank was anything between dried old paper that had gotten wet in between and the definite smell of rotten body tissue.

"Why the nuts couldn´t she stay in her coffin? The lid would have kept the stench inside at least. Or put her in a zinc coffin…"

"We aren´t the Boston Forensics, Josh! I guess you definitely wouldn´t like them to be mixed up with us in our task!" Henry grinned. When Marcus and Bishop had been in Boston, Marcus handled all death cases for the vampires and Bishop did his part being in the Boston Police. You simply can´t explain away a dead person but you can manipulate weaker beings into believing what you´re telling them. Without Marcus´ help it had become difficult to get rid of dead victims properly. Their last trouble with the Boston Forensics has not been so long ago when a victim got lost in the process and was exposed to the police…

Donna entered Aidan´s car and Josh shook his head no. Since he has gotten mixed up with the vampires, his life had become more difficult than with his werewolf fate alone. Surely, Aidan was a very good and true friend and Henry became a friend too, but all these vampire stuff had brought him into a world where death cases seemed to be the normal thing to cope with. Vampires in general held a strongly different point of view onto it and sometimes any individuals despised human life in a way which Josh couldn´t participate in. For Josh every life was worth as much as another. He for himself had learned to know what Aidan´s fellows thought about humans and werewolves. Especially about werewolves. They had taught it to him the very physically way Josh had expected that humans would fight against monsters. But monsters fighting each other out of reasons which seemed to be so typical human were weird.

Henry patted his shoulder and directed to Aidan´s car.

"Take your seat, I will come directly after I had my small talk with Max…" He grinned a bit and turned over to the place where Max was hiding himself in his car. He knocked at the window and Max turned the glass down. His head came out of the frame.

"We are ready to go, Max!" Henry said and directed to the back side doors of the hearse.

"…kay!? But…as far as I´m involved in burial business…that thing you did with Ms. Malik over there…" he directed to the wasted cemetery area; "That is never ever a Jewish burial prayer! The lady mentioned Osiris and her prayer was Egyptian I think. What are you guys doing here?"

Henry fixed his eyes with his own, the pupils widening but in the dim light Max didn´t get this totally. He took it for an effect of the lack of light which made human eyes widening the pupils.

"Guess you know that the word or name Malik is of Arabian origin, Max! She has had Egyptian roots and therefore it´s only natural to do some traditional prayers of the country she came from. Or do you have problems with a Jewish-Egyptian relation? They are not always natural born enemies. Humankind should develop more far, up to multicultural understanding! We are living in a modern world!" Henry´s voice had gotten this manipulative touch. He decided to put some force into his following words. "You will drive Ms. Malik to her former home where Donna will celebrate additional prayers for Ms. Malik and when she and Josh are ready, you can transfer the mortal remains of Ms. Malik to her new resting place!" he demanded.

It took a moment until Max nodded finally.

He gave in.

What do I care for what they are doing here as long as I´m paid for my services and as long as the corpse is not harmed in any way, he thought with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Okay, let´s go. It is friggin´ cold here and this snow won´t make it better!" Max answered when the wind pushed a new wave of snow grains forward and into his hair. He pulled back and turned up the side window. He started the engine and the hearse slowly drove to the pathway that led to the entrance of the cemetery.

"Let´s hurry!" Henry jumped into the car and Aidan followed Max down the road. They passed the entrance with meeting nobody else. Aidan stopped and Henry closed the gates behind them, climbed into the car again, his fingers going through his curls to wipe off a few snowflakes. He smirked and turned his face to Donna and Josh who watched him skeptically when his finger directed to the hearse in front of them.

"I convinced Max that we are doing some prayers for Sally."

**Sally´s resurrection_ Into the body and out of the body**

The strange procession headed into the slim court yard beside Josh´s and Aidan´s home. First one to come was the hearse then Aidan´s car. He brought up the rear to make safe that the neighbors won´t get attracted to what was going on in the back area of the house. The engines stopped and Aidan sighed with relief that they had made it up to here with no interruptions. Especially without any police controls.

"I´m glad we hadn´t been in any unwelcomed company…" Aidan whispered when he opened his door, ready to leave the car. Henry nodded and opened the door on his side, going to drop out of the car.

"Yup, we are…" Henry turned his head and froze.

"What? What´s going on Henry? Is…" Aidan wondered about his son stopping dead in his tracks.

"Goodness!" Henry brought out; "Not the thing we need just _right now_!"

"What?" Josh turned his head, only to see his neighbor from the other side of the street heading for…

…their back yard.

Not now!

"He guys? What´s up? Gonna get some party express tonight?" The man began when he reached Aidan´s car. Josh whispered a soundless _OH my God, _rolled his eyes. He jumped out of the car, right in front of his all to curious neighbor. He couldn´t grab for his shoulders to whirl him around to get the hearse out of sight.

"C´mon play nice and invite a nice neighbor to your party…the night is long and the Tv is a fucking crap!"

"Then take your remote and zap the channels!" Josh almost barked. "WE don´t have any party tonight. The bar is closed, Mr. Alstroem!" Oh my goodness, this Swedish people all were way too able to hold their drinks! Josh thought. But Mr. Alstroem didn´t show any intention to turn on his heels, heading back for his own house. Josh could smell the strong scent of alcohol of some high percentage. Not the guy to be satisfied by a glass of milk! Mr. Alstroem grabbed for the upper edge of the car roof to steady his slightly wavering stand and now directed to the hearse.

"Gee…did you…invite the mortician if any of you guys won´t have the capacities for more…" He wavered, steadied himself again; "Mo…more than one bottle of good old Kentucky Bourbon?!" He started laughing, patted Josh´s shoulder; "You should…get some…trai…training ´bout that! But you guys…Mr. Levison is a…is a Jewish…that´s like these A…Amish guys! I hahaha…I neverrr drink…wine!"

His speech was definitely slurring. Obviously it was _him_ who had cut across his capacities.

"That was Dracula!" Josh stated.

"Who? Dracula? Who´s that guy? Do I know him?" Mr. Alstroem stared at Josh, out of winking eyes, his lips opened when he licked them.

"For sure not, Mr. Alstroem. He lived in Transylvania some hundred years ago!" Josh shot back angrily. Slowly he was going to lose his temper with this neighbor.

"Ups! I guess…he…he had been a…fa…fabulous drinker."

"He had! He had!" Josh finished and now turned him around and pushed him into the direction of the sidewalk. "Now, Mr. Alstroem…go home before good old Dracula gets to you!"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aidan, who could barely hide back a roaring laughter. His hand pressed onto his mouth to hide his bared fangs. His eyes were pitch black.

When Josh had made sure that Mr. Alstroem had reached his house on the other side of the street safe and sound, he stared back at his vampire friend.

"What? What, Aidan?"

"Didn´t you not push it to the limit with this _I never drink wine Dracula thing_? " Aidan grinned.

"For sure not! Mr. Alstroem is as adhesive as a starved cootie!" Josh spat out and Aidan started to laugh out loud.

"Starved cootie!" He roared.

"Who´s gonna be the starved cootie here, Aidan?!" Josh hit him in the ribcage with his fist and Aidan bent down playfully. When Aidan rose his head again he saw the Swedish man from over the street stare out of the window. He growled and bared his fangs at him.

Josh tried to pull him aside. "Aidan! Are you mad? He will…"

"He will nothing, Josh! He´s stoned up to the cortex! I could smell at least a whole bottle of Kentucky Bourbon on him! He´s so friggin´ drunk he won´t make it for the toilet alone!"

_He couldn´t interact with the whole group at once, but the more they were splitting from each other, the more he had the chance to break the circle that was needed to perform the ritual completely. It was equal to break and interrupt a circle of salt which protected the mortals from the forces of hell when they called upon a demon. The Reaper felt not sure about if he was strong enough to attack the witch again. Once he had failed because she had called Toth to help her. This ancient Egyptian God of the dead was the protector of the souls during their way through the burial and resurrection ceremony. Once Toth had taken a soul under his protection it was impossible to get to her, to possess her but until she as weighted against the feather of Ammit and found to be too heavy._

_His mind remembered him of the threat Ammit had casted upon him if he would fail in his attempt to regain possession of Sally´s soul. Ammit, like all gods and lesser beings, never did a favor to anyone without an exchange. The prize for his revenge on Sally would be her soul to be devoured finally by Ammit._

_Couldn´t he deliver…his own soul would be the substitute!_

_He banished the thought of his own final destruction from his mind. Way too much fixed onto his own vengeance because what Sally had done to him, was the worst thing that could happen since he had found a way to get free of the Limbo himself. Thousands of years he had been caught in the pits of Limbo until one day he discovered that he only needed an open soul to occupy. Setting up a connection to a ghost who was caught in the mortal world, as long as this ghost didn´t get his/her own door to heaven. The other way around the ghost had to be free of any condemnation to hell, the soul had to be flawless and clean so the forces of hell won´t be going to suck her down into pure darkness._

_He had to search for such a soul over a long time and he had found it within Sally. Her not fulfilled life yet because she died way too young, her mental strength and her will to remain in the mortal world for an unknown time, had predicted her to be his vessel and his gate to the mortal world. The otherworldly sphere, from his own point of view, was his hunting ground and the area where he could indulge in his dark passion, could feed his own dark soul with the fruits of vengeance and power._

_Their weakness was his benefit. Their souls and their agony were his satisfaction._

_Since a very long time he had gone far over the limits that were set to him. He had broken the walls of his own weakness to cross the border toward unlimited power in eternity. His longing had developed far away from what had been his former task._

_He had become his own master._

_Astaroth and Lucifer, his former masters, had reduced to a heap of hellish power in the background of his mind. Limited in their own way and separated from real power by their dependence to be called upon by stupid mortals, who were craving for power, goods and material and immaterial property._

_He could laugh about such weak demons which had to make promises in exchange for the souls of these idiots._

_Weakness._

_He laughed._

_He had tried Henry, this lousy son of a vampire. Had tried Josh for his faith and found him to be weak from fear when not wolved-out at Full Moon. Had tried Donna but she had shown herself a strong minded bitch of a witch, armed by her magical powers and her knowledge to call upon nether demons or gods for support._

_The last one he could try to break the chain of prayers and vows, was this quarter of a millennium old vampire Aidan. He was the one with the loudest voice, the one who was a dark soul with his fall into sin when he killed his whole family. Astaroth would have been happy with him. With his uncountable chain of murders he had committed before this idiot changed to take his fill from donor´s blood. Bagged food! What a weak mess. Worthless as it lacked of real life force, merely tilted the hunger without tilting the true desire._

_The Reaper knitted his brows scornfully. His lips pulled back from his flawless white teeth: A glistening line on the upper jaw. When the grin grew wider, his lower jaw revealed a set of fangs that would be worth a vampire or werewolf. His head fell back into the neck and he growled with joy, his skin turned grey and his eyes became a glowing yellow._

_He would show them what he really was and which power he held in his true shape._

_Not this slim and faked-to-be south-eastern Europe guy…_

_He was tired of playing all these masks behind which he had hidden way too long. Now the time had come to roam the world as the Grim Reaper!_

_His true destination, his true self._

Aidan stared at Josh who was about to drop the plank with the terrible smelling corpse, merely hidden by an old blanket.

"Josh! Let´s go upstairs! If Donna wants her to be there, then we should do as demanded. I´m determined to get her back and be it, that we´ll have to throw away the whole damn bedroom afterwards. I won´t care for!"

Aidan grabbed the lose end of the plank that was dangerously dangling and pushed the whole thing forward. Max grinned bitterly and pressed his teeth together when they managed it to carry Sally upstairs into her former bedroom.

The bed had survived the feeding of Henry, his dripping wet, bloody and skinless body. So it would survive the corpse too, Aidan thought in grim determination. Josh followed them with Donna. Upstairs in the bedroom Aidan and Max set the plank on the ground.

Josh weaved himself through between them and the wall, hurried into the hall. Aidan heard him rustling in the hall closet hectically and a few moments later Josh came back with a piece of protective foil, his hands covered in surgery gloves like in the hospital. Aidan shot him a look from the side, avoided it to shake his head.

Josh and his OCD´s…

As nervous and as tensed Josh was, he got it that Aidan shot him a skeptical view.

"What? What, Aidan?

"I only thought that you…" Aidan began, being carefully because Josh´s voice got this high leveled timbre he always had when he was straight into pissed-off-mode.

"Thought what? That I´m carin´ a BIT for our home? Will I have to remind you, that it had been you who says that he´s nearly broke? Mine isn´t far better! Then I guess it won´t be wrong to care at least a bit for things which aren´t sold for a dollar! But maybe you vampire guys are satisfied just by a tomb or a coffin! I can sleep on the couch meanwhile!" Josh spat angrily.

He was aware that he was hurting Aidan´s feelings right now, that his friend barely escaped a coffin and following up a fatal fate! But now he wanted to offend him. Out of a mood he himself wasn´t aware of and why.

Aidan whirled around, his hands rising in an attempt to stop Josh. To stop him talking bopkus before Max would get it, what he had said.

Ready to lay his hands onto Josh´s mouth.

"Shut up! Are you mad, Josh? Or what?" he whispered into Josh´s ear, his mouth so near that Josh could smell his breath. Wouldn´t Aidan been a vampire, Josh may have sworn that he could scent the hunger out of his breath. Like a scent of hypoglycemia in a diabetic.

"What? Aidan! I swear you…"

"What? Telling him…" he directed over to Max who, for good luck, stood at the far corner of the room; "telling him, I´m a monster? What do you think did Henry do with his mind? To prevent him to become suspicious! Josh! You´re gonna acting like a friggin´ idiot! Could kick your brain into the trash can!" Aidan was speaking so fast, his hands closed around Josh´s cheeks. It would have taken him only a slight move to press it over Josh´s lips and pull him out of attention with vampire speed.

Josh knew how strong and fast Aidan could be if necessary. He never used his full force and strength onto Josh before. And didn´t want to start with it now, unless it would be inevitable.

"Get your hands off me!" Josh growled low voiced. Almost inaudible, if not for Aidan and Henry. For sure, when it came to Max.

"What are you talking about?" Max came up to them now.

"Oh nothing! My friend is sometimes somewhat strange. Right now he came up with an idea for the next Halloween decoration!" Aidan shook his head as if he had strong doubts about Josh´s mental health right now. Max grinned a bit and then let his look wandered around. It strolled over the bed, the room and the furniture.

"He´s right, Aidan! You should better make use of the protective foil before the corpse will ruin the bed. You won´t get rid of this smell so fast if any of it reaches the mattress. Believe me! I know what I´m talking about, since I ruined my first black suit because a body bag got lacerated and all kind of liquids soaked out of it and right over my trousers, when I got a corpse from the police!" Max smiled a bit; "That isn´t funny!"

"Please spare me the details!" Josh spat back. Aidan let go his cheeks and stepped back, letting out a deep breath of relief when Max became that casually.

Donna had waited now long enough.

These guys, other than the mortician, weren´t used to handle a corpse this way and she had shown some patience with them. But now it was time to go on and perform the ritual. There was no definite time span that had to be kept in view to guarantee that the ritual would work finally.

But the faster they got ready here, the better. Before any forces of hell would have time enough to call in their hellish comrades into a battle evil versus good. She didn´t know if Thot would stand at her side again when the Reaper would start another assault on her or on any of her companions.

"Let´s go on now!" She demanded amidst the discussion. Three faces turned to her abruptly as if they had totally forgotten that she was still here. At least she had the full attention now. She directed herself to Max;

"Okay, Mr. Taylor…we need some privacy now for the prayers and it would be nice if you are waiting down in the living room…"

Henry looked at her, his view went to Max if he would do like he was begged. Otherwise, this she could read from his face, Henry was ready and willing to put some well dosed pressure on Max. Conviction vampire-style. She slightly smiled at him, only a hint of a smile so that only Henry could see it, but he gave back a hint of a nod. Donna knew that Henry would be in her back.

Max nodded; " Of course! I´ll wait downstairs. Call me when you are ready…" He rose from the small chair and left the room.

Henry breathed with relief.

Max was running well under his conviction. For a moment he had been afraid that Josh´s uncontrolled tattle would ruin all he had prepared with care.

The door closed behind him with a soft Plong. In the sudden silence it sounded unnaturally loud. For a second no one seemed even to breathe.

Then all of them moved like in the tale of Sleeping Beauty when she woke up from her century long sleep. It was an otherworldly scene.

"Put Sally´s corpse on the bed please…"Donna demanded.

Josh and Henry grabbed Sally´s feet and shoulders and together they laid her on the foil. Josh wrinkled his nose because every movement of the wrapped body let emanate new waves of the choking smell.

The radio in the living room crackled and flickered. It was slightly vibrating on the board of the shelf, unnoticed by Max who was sitting in a chair.

_The Reaper heard the steady heart beat of a man. The pounding sound hammered in his ears, resonating in his head with the full force of life. He groaned and he tried to listen in the room. But it was silent but for the man´s life. The Reaper reached out, stretching for a larger range until he found a hint of a voice from upstairs._

_"…__the bed please…" _

_The rest was inaudible or he simply missed it. Putting things together by the end of a sentence made no sense and his unearthly life force pumped with more speed now when he felt strangely excited and full of expectation. The Reaper expanded his sight, his mind drifting through stone and wood when he longed for the room upstairs. His unearthly shape kept invisible to the eyes of the beings which were in the large bedroom._

"Don´t tell me that we shall unwrap her by now…" Josh pressed out and Henry could hear his heart beat speeding up on the mere thought of such a thing like peeling off a corpse from half rotten bandages. To tell the truth it weren´t bandages but more a large tissue like a bed sheet into which she was wrapped at her burial.

Malik; that meant king or queen in Arabian language and the Islamic people wrapped the dead into linen or other materials and often buried them without a coffin. US law prescribed that a corpse, buried on a normal, non-Jewish or non-Islamic, cemetery had to be put into a coffin to be grounded. So Sally had been traditionally wrapped into a linen sheet and then put into the coffin.

Both facts didn´t make any difference when it came to give off a stench of decay after two years in Boston earth. This was not the desert with dry sand, where corpses dried to mummies.

_The Reaper couldn´t manifest his body shape and his whole entity in the world of the living. Only his mind could reach the room but this was quite enough in the moment. Enough for him to listen, to lurk and to search for the next victim among the attendees. Anybody of them had to be the weak element in the chain which was necessary to perform the ritual until its end. He only had to find out who._

In the bedroom Donna gave her directions because nobody but her was used to an ancient Egyptian resurrection ritual.

"Okay! We have to stand at all four sides of the bed…" She directed to the bed and three men, a werewolf and tow vampires looked at her with an asking facial expression. The bed stood at the wall with its head board.

"_Four sides_? We have three free accessible sides…" Aidan directed around the bed.

_The Reaper grinned a devilish grin._

_Their first problem that could break the ritual, he thought with enjoyment_.

"We have to stand at the foot, the head and the sides of it. Thus we have to move it from the wall so far that one of us can stand at the head without neither touching the head board nor the wall. Nobody is allowed to touch the wall for not giving the dark forces access to the room and Sally´s body. That´s important, don´t forget it!" Donna explained the situation.

"You mean, if…if I touch a wall…a friggin´ demon can walk…right through me into our world…"

"Not exactly this way, but this fits best into describing the problem…"

"Uh…hu…" Josh rose his hands in a gesture of innocence and Henry smiled a bit. He nodded to Aidan and the older vampire nodded.

Aidan and Henry grabbed the bed frame and with their strength they pulled the bed away and free from the wall. The rug under it curled into waves and a cloud of dust made Josh sneeze. He put his hand over his nose and stepped back a few steps.

"You will have to live with it by now, Josh!" Aidan could barely hide a slight smile, responding to Josh´s overly critical look on the chunks of dust which came into view now, that the bed had been moved away from the wall. The long sides from the bed were so deep to the ground that it was nearly impossible to wipe under it without moving the frame. Strangely Josh never cared about it before when they had moved in. His look wandered from the dusty rug to the wall and Aidan saw how his glance fixed on a certain area of the wallpaper. He bent nearer and saw little brown spots which were spread over the wall and looked like they had dried in since a while.

Josh felt with his finger over some of them, then scratched with his nail at one of them. It felt like dried liquid. His nose wrinkled. That looked…

It looked like…dried blood.

"Aidan?!"

Aidan turned his head to him, looked at the wall where Josh´s finger directed to.

"Sorry for the mess, Josh! That´s blood…I know. I hadn´t seen that it had dripped behind the head board…"

"You aren´t gonna tell me that this is blood from…when Henry…when he…fed in here the night you…" Josh stuttered and his voice went higher. The night Aidan had brought in two girls to feed Henry with blood after the skinning… Oh my God! What if the corpses would have been found by any fuckin´ coincidence and the police would have been led by them to their home? In his mind Josh saw them caught in an interrogation room with evidences on the table and a damn CSI type calling them questions about the death cases…

"What if anybody would have…" Josh suggested with a whisper.

"Nobody has found anything…the clean up was safe!" Aidan whispered into Josh´s ear, but he saw in his face that Josh wasn´t so much as convinced.

Aidan felt some guilt about the situation that had so fatally run out of hand… And the blood stained wallpaper was the remaining evidence. He couldn´t blame Henry for it. Even not for the spots of blood that now made a strange decoration on the wall.

Spots on the wall and in the curtains and rugs and pools of blood on the ground when… Aidan felt nausea rising by the thought of… There had been blood everywhere, even on their dresses and clothes when he had killed….

…his own family.

His wife.

His son.

Nausea and shame. And deep guilt.

Even more than two hundred years after it had happened in a cold winter night up in Massachusetts State.

_The Reaper triumphed._

_He had found the weak link of the chain. He had found the one he would be able to break and the one he needed to break the chain. He swallowed back his evil laughter that would have make the walls shaking if he would have had any material influence in the world of the living now. But to know that the victory could be his now, was still enough in the moment._

_Those stupid and brainless mortals and undead who dared to rise against him!_

_HIM!_

_He roared with satisfaction._

Josh saw a tear in the corner of Aidan´s eye. For good they all were aware of what Henry and Aidan were. In the wrong surroundings, tears of blood could be terribly mistaken. Show the vampire or, by others, would be related to some damn hemorrhagic fever like Ebola or Lassa…

_The Reaper meant to taste the salty blood on Aidan´s cheekbones moments before Aidan wiped them away angrily. The taste of guilt and death and weakness. Weakness was the key!_

"There should be no blood spilt in here…" Donna warned all of them. "Please." She added.

There was blood spilt in here before…" Josh answered soundlessly. His hand resting on the wall; "So the room is compromised by now..."

"Before. Uhm…" she nodded in direction to the wall; "…this is dead. I mean; no living blood…like spilt tears or blood from a wound, if human or not! That´s all!"

Aidan looked at his blood stained fingers. Going out to wash his hands would take additional time. So he licked his fingers thoroughly until they were clean again. Donna looked at him, her brows knitted but she didn´t say a word. Then she turned her face towards the corpse on the bed.

"Everybody ready?" she asked when she had positioned herself at the foot of the bed.

The scent of decay was spreading through the bedroom. Josh tried to keep control. To show no reaction to it but it was difficult for him. Prey of a werewolf night was freshly broken but not two years old like her body. Henry and Aidan seemed to be resistant against it. No wonder. Both had spent two weeks among the dead or the dying.

"Ready?" Donna asked again.

The three of them nodded silently.

"Anything we´ll have to do or to take care of?" Henry asked. He wasn´t sure if they were about to be silent participants or if they would have an active part in bringing Sally back.

"One; don´t touch the walls. Two; don´t touch Sally´s body. Three; a warning! You are going to see things you maybe never have thought to be possible…There´s no fear allowed, no weakness, to prevent the forces of darkness from taking over her soul before it is transferred into her body!"

Donna opened her bag which she had brought in from the cemetery. She took out a ceremonial baton, then she came over to Sally´s right side. Henry looked at her and she indicated him to exchange the position.

"I will call upon Osiris! First step is the mouth opening ceremony to open her mouth, to reawaken her senses so she can listen to Osiris. To make her body, her Kha…alive…we have to call and name all the essential material parts of her body to create a living canopy, a vessel for her soul, the Ba. When her soul is transferred into her body I have to call upon the Sahu, her…ghost body or ghostly body. We don´t wanna have her walking around in her physical body like a zombie!" Donna explained. "You see… these are a lot of single steps to be done and I need all of you and all your concentration, so that the Reaper cannot take possession of her again! The very moment her soul moves out of the gates of Limbo is the most dangerous one! The Reaper will try to prevent this!"

Donna bent over Sally´s corpse, the baton, called Gimel, shaped in the form of a serpent, was hovering over the head area and she began to sing again in this ancient language Henry had heard before on the grave yard. It was melodic but her voice sounded strange and resonant with the syllables. The most remarkable that Henry and Aidan could hear from it, was the lack of vowels.

"Osiris, keeper of the gate. Master of all fate. Hear us. Before time and after. Before knowing and nothing. Accept our offering. Know our prayer. Here lies Sally, the faithful wife of her husband_. _Let her cross over."

Donna made a wiping movement with the serpent from head to the feet of the bandaged corpse.

"Osiris, keeper of the gate! Here is Gimel, opener of the mouth! So let Gimel open the gate of her mouth that her soul can sing the prayers of your honor." She surrounded the bed and stopped at Sally´s head. Then she touched her mouth under the linen wrapping with the baton.

Josh, Aidan and Henry stared at this face, that was hidden under the half rotten bandages which fell loosely over the structures which must have sunken down to the bones.

No one dared to breathe.

Josh gave a gasping sound of surprise, when the former lips under the bandage suddenly moved and in the breathless silence of the room a crackling sound emanated from the corpse. The linen tensed over the jaws when they opened to a slit.

His eyes were widened and his heart was beating fast with a mix between excitement and fear.

What else would happen then when Donna was to call upon all the other limbs of Sally? Terrible visions of a bandaged and walking mummy came into his mind. He had seen such things…in the old movies with Boris Karloff or Christopher Lee. His fists clenched when he stared at the corpse with a strange fascination, waiting for the worst to happen. He felt how fear grabbed for his heart. You should not feel fear! His brain tried to convince his body which seemed to have split from the rest of his awareness. No rationalism. This had friggin´ nothing to do with any rationalism. This was simply…

…weird.

Aidan and Henry heard Josh´s heart pounding in his chest, heard the increased speed of his pulse and both were aware, what had happened yesterday in the back room of the soup kitchen. How Josh had faltered and fallen.

"Josh! Oh my God! Brace yourself! You know what Donna had said about it, if _only_ _one_ would be weak!" Aidan hissed over to Josh who stood at the left side of the bed. Josh´s head shot around and the expression in his eyes sent a cold shiver down Aidan´s spine.

"Brace. Your. Self!" Aidan repeated, his voice all compulsive.

Josh nodded desperately and tried to relax, to focus on the very moment when Sally would be among them again. Out of the corner of his eye he looked over to Henry who fixed his glance with his now bled black eyes, his lips moving.

Josh meant to hear the words _relax, relax…_

God! These friggin´ vampires! Josh thought. But deep within, he was thankful for the support of these two… One was his dearest and only friend. The other had become a friend by now recently. His memory drifted back when he had sit at the bed, comforting and caring for a seriously hurt vampire whose eyes, despite the fact they had been half shaded by morphine, had looked at him with despair.

"Here is Osiris!" Donna´s voice had become darker now as if she was speaking as the god himself; "I extended my hand as Lord of the crown, I raised my feet. I´m on the same Horus, I am victorious as dead. I talk to my mouth."

Either her voice had changed its timbre, adapting to a male or Osiris himself was speaking out of her mouth.

By now, everything had become possible, Josh thought and in the facial expression of Aidan he saw, that the vampire thoughts may have been the same now.

The whole atmosphere in the bedroom had changed to an otherworldly one now. Either they all were kinda dreaming or the most strangely things of their whole lives were going on just right now here.

Donna was singing again and her voice changed to her normal one then. She bent over to Sally´s hidden feet, her wand hovering over them, when she began with the next prayer.

"Osiris, keeper of the gate. Master of all fate. Hear us. Before time and after. Before knowing and

nothing. Accept our offering. Know our prayer. Thou who will talk to us through Sally! Get her back her feet in the sign of Gimel…" She touched the bandaged feet with the wand. "Let her walk in Amtuat, the realms of the dead and let be Thot being at her side. Thot, the guardian at the gate of Amtuat. So that she can walk with her feet and talk to thou."

Josh stared at Sally´s feet, waiting breathlessly. He knew that she was buried bare feet and it took only a bit of imagination to see the structure of each single toe under the old linen.

Josh gasped soundlessly. Counting.

One. Two. Three.

The toes slightly cringed and then feet moved under the bandages, kept in line only by the tight wrappings.

"O Osiris Amenti. You get back your feet! O Osiris in the west, the land of the dead, come to me! Here is lying Sally, the faithful wife of her husband, descendant from the line of Malik, the kings."

Her voice changed again;

"Here is Osiris! Keeper of the gate! I go with my feet and talk to my mouth. I call upon thou, Sally, wife and daughter of Malik. Talk to my mouth."

A mere second nothing happened.

Then a sound escaped from the bed. To call it a voice was too much. It was a half hidden, constricted sound that let everybody shiver in the bedroom.

"Sally? Sally, is that you…?" Josh tried, his voice trembling with excitement.

"She´s not in…inside now!" Aidan warned him. His voice slightly more than a whisper, as if he was afraid to break the rituals power. Donna shot a disapproving glance at him and he fell silent. The expression of guilt in his eyes, she so thoroughly knew, was enough for her. She nodded barely and went on with the ritual prayers.

"O Osiris Amenti! You get back your head…"

She touched Sally´s head with the wand in form of a serpent. A rustling sound was audible and the linen around the head seemed to fill, not with life but with flesh. It lifted a few millimeters as if the shrunken flesh was growing back.

Josh´s mind refused to accept what was going on in front of his very eyes and the eyes of everybody else in the room. Only Donna seemed to be unimpressed by it. For sure she was used to such things and Josh came to the conclusion, that it wasn´t the first time she was performing such a resurrection ritual.

There was only one option to prevent him from developing fear.

He closed his eyes with the sheer force of his will. Like in old childhood days. What you don´t see that doesn´t exist or doesn´t take place!

With closed eyes he thought that at any moment, coming soon, they would have to unwrap the bandages to set Sally´s corpse free, to enable her to stretch and move her limbs.

Josh dared to open his eyes for a moment, watching over to Aidan. The vampire stood at the side of the bed, his eyes fixed onto Sally´s yet reviving corpse. Josh didn´t dare to say a word, being afraid to disturb Donna´s prayers and concentration. But he could read the excitement in Aidan´s face that was barely hidden now. This wasn´t the night before Full Moon, when his senses were all sharpened in expectation of the night of the turning wolf.

Aidan stared at Sally or what was left over from her. His ears reacted to the ultra fine noises of rustling linen fibers. He wasn´t sure if Josh would hear them or only Henry too. His son tried to stay calm, his face with the barely healed abrasions more in a mood of sheer interest than Josh´s face that was tensed with barely kept back fear.

Vampires were so much more used to bodies which were transforming into anything else than a normal human. And Aidan as well remembered the moment, when he had held a more or less motionless Henry in his lab, the very night in the fields, when he had turned him into a vampire with his immortal blood. The memory let wash a feeling of physical weakness over him when he thought how much in a lack of blood he had been himself, barely recovered from the multiple bullet wounds he had caught in that trench… Turning Henry in order to save the man who had thrown himself into the path of a stake that was intended to kill him, Aidan, had cost his last remaining strength. But there had been no other choice…

He had killed that once. Not the first and but not the last time in his long existence. But he had defended it before himself with protecting himself and with saving Henry, who had been mortally wounded. A stake right into the abdominal artery couldn´t had been survived under the circumstances of those days in 1918.

Donna went on with singing and praying. Her wand touched the torso, the left arm, then the right arm and Aidan remarked that he didn´t concentrate on her words anymore when his memories went back to his now-son-in-immortality. Henry had always been the vampire who was totally interested into the skills and the experience of his newly won existence. Henry never had felt any fear about being a vampire. He simply swallowed all what Aidan told him, promised him and turned it into an all over adventurous experience. Enjoying his new way of life, his skills, his hunger and despite it, his growing sense of control, what enabled him to mix sex and feeding without losing so much as control. He was a difference to Rebecca, who, when newly turned, was full of over eagerly intention to make brutally use of her newly won skills. She was overly ambitious and led by a sense of revenge for what she had gone through when she was mortal. Aidan had felt afraid of it, all too well aware how fast this feeling of power and invincibility would turn into the contrary. What finally had led to her wish to be redeemed from an existence that shouldn´t had been in her point of view…

Josh saw that Aidan´s glance became kind of hollow when his mind was anywhere else but with the ritual. He would have liked to tip him onto the shoulder but didn´t dare to leave his position.

Aidan! Aidan! Josh shouted soundless in his mind.

Damn! Could vampires be mind readers? Aidan had mixed up or…visited…the brain of a former police officer. Leading him committing suicide out of mental desperation. And Aidan had influenced the brains of his parents when he fatally came out with his confession of being a werewolf.

The wand touched the lower abdomen and the legs. With each touching Donna called upon the limb she touched, called it by its name.

"O Osiris Amenti. You get back your head. You are again in the possession of your flesh. Back to you are your limbs. Back to you are your limbs, put together your body parts. Healed are all your sufferings, healed you are of them…"

Donna stepped around the bed, her hands made waving movements and she sang in this ancient voice.

"She, Sally, has taken her seat before the God Osiris. There she is powerful, there she had been transfigured, she plows there, she harvests there, she drinks there and enjoys the pleasures of love and will do anything she did on earth…"

Donna returned to her position at the bed. She bent deeper to Sally, touched her now fuller lips under the layers of linen with the wand and when she lifted her head, the shapes under the half rotten material …

….moved and a gasping sound escaped what had to be Sally´s mouth.

That can´t be! It can´t be! Josh´s mind pounded into his head. This can´t be true! A hallucination of my overly excited hearing! There´s an explanation! A rational seated explanation. It must be gas. Gas like Methane what escaped a rotting body, the soaking liquids that had dripped through the material of the bandages. All was nothing but forensic stuff. A scientifically and rationally manifested thing. He had heard of this during his medical education.

The sound was a half constricted one, a gurgling noise;

"Rhearrr…meh…osssirrrrr…isss"

Josh stepped back, terrified.

That was not to be mistaken now.

Donna went on, unimpressed by the faces distorted by fear around her. The air seemed to vibrate and the stench from the wrappings were choking. The air seemed to be thick with it and even Aidan and Henry tried to keep control now that the atmosphere seemed to have changed. Nobody dared to say a word, merely dared to breathe though the vampires barely had need for it.

Donna had risen her head, her face skywards and she spread her arms to both sides. Her voice became darker, her timbre equal to what they had heard before when she spoke with the voice of the god.

"You eat the bread with the God of the grand staircase, the Lord of the Ennead. There you are connected with the Horus servants. You climb up and down and nobody is holding you back!"

Her voice became more powerful, reverberated from the ceiling and the walls of the bedroom.

"Liveth Osiris and she will live! As Osiris is not dead, Sally is not to die. As Osiris is not annihilated, Sally is not to be destroyed…!"

Donna let her face sink downwards, looking at the body on the bed. She waved her arms in large bows up and down like the waves of the River Nile. Then she grabbed for a canopy with the left hand, poured some water out of it and sprinkled it over the bed and the corpse.

"As the water of the Mother Nile is giving life to the kingdom of the Upper Egypt and the Lower Egypt, thou shall give life to Sally…"

"Help me!" she demanded of Josh, Aidan and Henry, when she sat the canopy with the Holy water aside. Josh thought for a moment if the bottle really contained water from the Nile. But with Donna everything was possible. Even that she owned the strangest ingredients for her magic.

"Now we have to unwrap Sally´s corpse. Help me with her!"

Josh froze. His eyes widened in disbelief, now that the moment had come, he had been afraid of all the time since they had dug Sally up on the cemetery.

_tbc_


	9. Chapter 9

_Final chapter_

**Sally´s resurrection****_- _**_When Osiris will let go a soul...he weeps the salt of the seas_

Josh almost panic-fuelled grabbed for the pair of medical gloves, that he had stuffed in the pocket on the back side of his jeans. Never ever he would touch the corpse in this condition with bare hands. He stared on the bandages that were wrapped around the body, giving it the look of an old ancient Egyptian mummy. Where to start? Which end? He thought.

Aidan shot him a view, his face seemed to say; what do you hesitate, she won´t bite you!

Hesitatingly Josh grabbed for any part of the bandages and carefully started to unwrap at one corner. The old linen was thick and hard but it lacked of any balms or oils or resins, which the Egyptians would have mostly used for the preparation. When Josh hesitated, Aidan bent over to him, his voice low and a hiss;

"Don´t give the Mr. Monk in here, Josh! Once and for all! This is Sally and we will do that only once…"

"…in a while." Josh added unhappily.

Aidan answered his reply with a killing glance. "We either don´t have any time nor any use now for your freakin´ OCD…proof yourself a man and make yourself useful!" He saw that Josh was nervously dancing from one foot to the other, definitely feeling more than uncomfortable with the situation. "Waking up beside a broken deer´s body is no such problem for you, I guess!"

Josh gulped down a reply, his face went stone when Aidan handled him like this and he bit down hard on his teeth, tried to concentrate on his hands. More automatically than consciously his hands fit into the task. It was not unequal to unwrapping bandages from a patient in the hospital.

With Donna, Josh, Aidan and Henry working each one at his side, the heap of bandages on the ground was growing fast. The last layer went down what for they had to peel it carefully because this layer was soaking with liquids of which nobody wanted to know exactly what they had been before. Making the bandage sticking to the skin.

Josh gulped down a wave of nausea when the body was uncovered finally. The scent which emanated from it, wasn´t worse than before because the half rotten linen had kept back nothing of it.

In a mood of strange fascination Josh bent down. He tried not to inhale when his face was only inches away from Sally´s body. He crouched beside the bed and his eyes fixed onto one arm.

The structure of the skin made a strange pattern of a parchment surface with wrinkled lines and creases, folding and crossing each other. Never before Josh had perceived that fine hair was growing on Sally´s arms. The hair stood at end, now that the linen had been pulled off.

It gave Sally a strange semblance of life, which added to the fact that all of them had seen how her cheeks upholstered and her lips had slightly moved under the linen.

A cold shudder ran down Josh´s spine and he straightened himself up unintentionally, stepped back until he felt comfortable with it again.

Aidan looked over the corpse with the unnaturally pale and grayish skin color. The sight wasn´t unusual to him because it didn´t differ much from the sight of Suren when they had released her from her underground prison after eighty years.

"Okay. May we go on now…" Donna stated when she watched the corpse and found it to be within the conditions she had expected.

She stepped back into her position beside the head and grabbed the little bottle with her right hand while she spread the left hand over the body. Henry saw a bundle of slim wooden wands in her hand. Into them old symbols were engraved.

The ancient song began again and the air suddenly seemed to vibrate with a strange resonance. Henry and Aidan felt it stronger as a vibration than as a sound in their ears. There had to be very low frequencies, sounds and syllables. It was more like a humming deep within.

Was it a hallucination, created by the strange atmosphere, or was there a pale greenish light in the room that spread from one wall to the other, from the ground to the ceiling.

"O Osiris in the west, keeper of the gate of Amtuat, the land of the dead! Come to me! Come to me! I am your sister Isis! Arise, arise! Come on my word! Your name is heard now in every district. Thee call with me to the right time…!" Donna´s arm moved over the corpse, the bundle made a soft rustling noise. Like a whisper.

Her voice vibrated through the room, reverberated from the walls.

"Oh my Mother Nut, spread thyself over me, that thou mayest place me amongst the imperishable stars, which are in thee, and I die not again!"

Donna poured water in the half opened lips of the corpse.

Josh expected it to run down the cheeks. The dead don´t swallow, the less a ghost, an incorporeal being.

But he had seen here way too much tonight…

Like by magic the water disappeared into the mouth of Sally, only her Adams-apple didn´t move in difference to the living. Good targeting, Josh thought. He lifted his glance a bit to look over to Henry and Aidan who stood on their positions now like before.

"Rise up Sally, rise up as a perfect soul in the west, the land of the dead. Rise from Amtuat. The water of the Grand Mother Nile give thou life as the Grand Mother Nile giveth Akh to the Upper Egypt and the Lower Egypt from the beginning to the ending of time. O Osiris, keeper of the gate, Lord of the Ennead! Osiris Amenti! Let her cross over and give her Ba back to her Ka…! Ba from Amtuat! Come to her!" Donna spread sprinkles of water over the now naked corpse.

"I call upon Ba. I call upon Khu. I call upon Sekhem! Here is lying Sally, daughter of the Malik. Give her back her Sahu so Ba and Khu will have a house within her. Let her liveth and her Sekhem will thrive in the eternal shelter! You, O Osiris give her back to us and let her cross over from Amtuat for that…"

_The Reaper was hovering in the immense hall of the Limbo. The Sally thing was wavering, flickering and he felt a force pull on the connection he held with her. A strong force that grew with the strength of a voice that came from anywhere...anywhere outside the Limbo. He growled with rage, shot forward._

_His preternatural hearing spread around until it rested in the room he had entered by his mind before._

"Rise up Sally, rise up as the perfect soul in the west..._"_

_...as the perfect soul...?!_

_...The perfect soul! SOUL! SOUL!_

_The Reaper screamed with rage. Anybody was to take what was HIS! HIS! This damn witch! She was about to steal what was his property! How could she dare this? Sally was HIS! HIS! HIS!_

_He shot forward and the cloud of red fog was splitting in front of him and it whirled around, mixing with the glowing red light behind him that seemed to fill the whole space._

_He saw the witch who was performing the resurrection ritual and he saw Sally´s body lying on the bed. Her chest was lifting und lowering as if she was breathing but he knew it to be an illusion. The dead didn´t breathe._

_The damn werewolf and these damn creatures who thrived from the living. To of them he had given a try before. But the vampire wasn´t weak enough despite the fact that he had been physically weakened, but the Sally-thing had protected him against his definite will. The other, this Josh-thing, half human half werewolf was protected by the witch._

_One remaining target!_

_The Reaper turned his attention onto Aidan who stood at the end of the bed now, staring at Sally´s moving, but yet soulless body. Her soul was still in Limbo an what was lying there on the bed was only an empty shell, a vessel. Keeping her soul here in Limbo meant to make her nothing but a walking dead...a zombie._

_The Reaper growled and let out a roaring laughter._

Aidan stared at the corpse. He had seen dead humans before. Men and women. Nothing uncommon. Sally looked less shriveled than before. Like the tissue around the bones had filled up with what couldn´t be water. Not with the minimal amount of liquid that Donna had poured into Sally´s mouth. But she had said something about the great Mother Nile. Water of life. Something like that.

Life.

Water of Life.

Like...like...

...blood.

The life force. Blood is life. Water is life. He had taken blood, had fed on it.

_"__Sally! You have to obey! You have to do as I will!" The Reaper shouted at the wavering thing, the shape that was Sally._

Donna bent over the corpse and waved with her hand, directing Josh to rise from the bedside, getting him out of his torpor.

"Stand up, Josh!" she whispered, her voice a commanding one, even when it was low. Josh shot upwards, his face a mixture of surprise and guilt. God, he behaved like a five year old terrified child. He tried to regain his composure to the outside, but inside he felt his heart beating wildly. He focused all his hope onto the very moment, when this was finished. When the ritual would be completed and a Sally, as they knew her, would be walking again among the living.

Josh watched over to Aidan.

Anything seemed to be wrong with his friend and this definitely had nothing to do with the fact that he himself had barely escaped from a final and fatal fate.

Aidan´s expression was that of an unnatural tension, his eyes bled black again and fixed onto the corpse that now was awakening to life again in a strange way.

_The Reaper grinned, his face a mask of hatred when he watched the scenario in the bedroom. His hand was outstretched and the Sally-thing was flickering and wavering. Her face a mask of pain, her mouth opened in a silent scream when she desperately tried to escape from the grip that nailed her fixed behind an invisible wall._

_"__You won´t leave me, Sally! You´re nothing without me!"_

_"__As you´re nothing without ME !" The thought went into his mind, sent by her when she was unable to scream it at him with her voice. "I. GO. NOW!"_

_"__You won´t! You never ever will! You´re mine! MINE! MINE!" he screamed but Sally, as uncertain as her shape had become over the last few minutes, wasn´t willing to give up now._

_Her friends had come for her and they were about to call her back, out of the Limbo!_

_She bucked and twitched, whirling her fingers through the air which were more like shrunken claws than fingers. The force of the Reaper was strong, but stronger was the voice that was calling for her. Called for her to come back home._

_Where was Thot, the guiding and protecting god of the dead? The voice of Osiris was strong and fierce, even among the hellish noises that filled the immense hall like the red glowing from beneath._

_The Reaper felt how Sally threatened to slip from him, pulled into the other world by the powerful voice of the witch. His last chance to regain control, to hold her captive here, was …_

_…__to break the chain._

_A chain was to be broken by its weakest link._

_His mind stretched and stretched until it reached the mind of this condemned vampire, the offspring of the old monster, named Aidan. He probed it but an invisible wall kept him locked off. The bastard had blocked the access to his mind._

_The Reaper wondered how strong this former weakling was and time was running out for him. So he let go and switched over from the progeny to the base._

_The thing that this bastard called his FATHER!_

_It was so easy now to get access to this damned creature. One of his worst enemies was open now like a book. Without effort the Reaper did melt his mind with Aidan´s and started to search for the point at which Aidan was at his weakest._

_It took him only moments and he grinned devilish with excitement._

Aidan tensed and moaned when sudden dizziness swept over him. His head seemed to burst with glowing heat and unintentionally a groan escaped his lips. Then it was over as fast as it had come. He felt somewhat unsteady on his legs and his hand grabbed for a hold. He shook his head to get rid of the feeling but it was gone before he could define what it had been.

Aidan stared at the corpse…

The face was young and curly brown hair that was tied up to a waving mane, formed a long pony tail. The facial features were fine defined and the lips formed a full and curved line. Eyelids with long brown lashes opened over hazelnut brown eyes and the woman smiled. A tear appeared in the corner of her eye and her lips moved when she whispered a name.

"Aidan…" Her once strong and self confident voice now had become a whisper.

A cold shudder was running down his spine and he stared at the woman who was lying in front of him.

"Anne…"

His wife.

His voice nearly broke when the name escaped his lips. His voice sounded low and hoarse in his ears.

"Aidan! Help me…oh dear God, help me…!" She moved slightly, with her right hand extended, as grabbing for a hold. Aidan stood fixed, his heart beating wildly when he looked at his beloved wife.

He bent down to her, his hands grabbing for her shoulders, ignorant to her fearful groans. Her heartbeat was hammering in his ears, her blood was singing to him. The beating pulse under his fingertips was hard and wild, when her panic stricken heart pumped her very life force through her veins.

Blood.

A red cloud.

The world was blood. A red glow behind his eyes and her blood was singing to him, urging, commanding him to take what was his. The hunger roared with rural force in his mind, his veins and his intestines.

Take her!

Take what is yours! And tilt the pain in you that is longing for her since eternal ages. Since the day you met her for the first time.

_The Reaper roared with joy when he felt the longing through Aidan and with an evil grim he decided to fire up the feeling. Intensifying it until Aidan was a helpless bundle of hunger in his claws and the wild animal within him roared and fought against the invisible bars of the cage that Aidan had once built up. The cage he once built up to protect him from giving in into the animal within. The bars which so rarely broke, to them he was holding so dearly._

Aidan growled deep in his throat, the hunger within him was merging with an unbearable longing for his wife.

He was mute to the voices behind and around him. There were voices crying for him to stop. He had gone so far, he won´t stop right now!

Aidan´s fingers clung to the shoulders of his wife. He growled and his fangs fell, his eyes bled black. His breath reflected from the bare skin at her throat when he pulled away the collar that she herself had made of lace. Anne was crying, her fists pressed into his chest in a desperate attempt to ward him off, to push him away from her. But she was so weak in relation to his preternatural vampire strength. Her heartbeat grew wild and irregular and her hazelnut brown eyes were widened with fear now. Her small fists with the slim delicate fingers began to pound against his chest.

His mouth moved nearer to her throat. The tips of his fangs scratched over the soft skin of her cleavage when his saliva traced a thin line upwards.

"You´re mine, Anne. You ever belonged to me and now for me it has come full circle, my beloved wife…" His voice was low and he felt her tremble with…what he took for anticipation. He licked over the delicate skin with the sweet taste of lavender, inhaling the scent that was so specifically hers.

The hunger roared within him and he wrapped the thick tail of her hair around his left hand, his right hand comforting the side of her throat before he gasped and then finally sank in his teeth.

He felt her tense under his hands, under his grip. Her body sank against him and he began to drink. Her desperate cries subsided to give space to mutual groans and his hand came down. His fingers clung to the seam of her long skirt, pulling it up until he reached her bare thigh under it.

The blood shot into his mouth, over his tongue in a hot red gush. Pumped upwards by her heart with growing speed. He sucked, gulped and swallowed the nectar that her body gave free. It was red and hot and sweet like Lethe. Her essential life force. The stuff he had been waiting for so long since he had spoken the marriage vows in the small church in Urban Boston, years ago.

His ears grew numb to her desperate voice and he gulped down what was running into his mouth. His lips red with blood, that ran down his cheeks in little rivulets. Soaked down into his collar and put a glistening and glowing red color onto the throat and the cleavage of his wife. She was melting against him, her growing weakness made her sink into his arms with fatal determination.

Her heartbeat drove him mad, the sweetness of her life essence that ran down his tongue, deep into his body.

Small fists were pounding against his back and from far he heard a child´s voice crying.

"Daddy! Please…what are you doing? Please…stop!"

Aidan turned his face from Anne´s throat, looking down onto the boy who desperately tried to stop him. Blood dripped from his lips and his tongue shot out, sucking up the red liquid with a sound like a feeding pig.

"Daddy! Oh please…what have you done?" The eyes of the boy who was his beloved son were widening when he saw the blood dripping from the lips of his father. Never ever before he had seen this, had him seen like this. The once loving expression was tilted from his face, the eyes were black orbs and terrible elongated canines were protruding under his upper lip that now was pulled back in a deadly grimace.

Aidan growled and whirled around, angry about the persistence of his son who dared to disturb his feeding now. The hunger roared within him with animalistic force and in less than a second he grabbed his son and dug his hands into the slim shoulders.

The lifeless body of his wife fell to the ground with the slowness and grace of a dancer.

He bit down hard and the cry of fear and surprise that came from the lips of his son reverberated from the walls. The slim body of his son twitched and trembled in his hands and his feet were dangling above the ground when Aidan pulled him up into his arms. He pulled him close as if he was cuddling with him like he had done when his son was out of breath once they had run along the fields.

Aidan drank without mind, captured in the hunger and the longing from deep within. The blood, the young blood of his son gushed down into his throat like the blood of his wife before.

The taste seemed to rob him of all his controls and when finally the body in his arms went droopy he gasped. The blood was vibrating through his whole body. Aidan threw his head back and roared with satisfaction. Hot and vivid the blood filled him from the scalp to the toes.

He felt sated and filled up to completion.

Heat was running through his entire body and he gasped until the feeling subsided and he came down from his height.

Inevitably the sense of delight was fading like moonlight disappearing behind a cloud. Aidan gulped and painfully and all out of sudden he became aware what he was doing here.

He stared at the bundle in his arms and then he pushed his hands forward, holding his boy´s shape in a distance now. Aidan stared into the eyes of his son that were still widened and now broken by death.

His hands opened, his son dropped to the ground with a thud and Aidan staggered back, staring at the bodies that were lying lifeless now on the raw planks of the porch.

He watched down onto his hands that were stained with blood and hectically he wiped over his mouth and chin, his whole body trembling in a mixture of his pounding heart and fear. Disgust was what he felt now and tears, hot and thick, ran down his cheeks. The bloody tears were mixing with the blood on his lips and his cheeks.

"No. NO! What have I done? WHAT have I DONE?" he screamed in disbelief, now that he was watching the unearthly scenario in front of his eyes and feet. He stumbled backwards across the porch, staring at his hands and his arms like at an unknown enemy.

"Nooo!" He screamed in disbelief about what he saw.

Had it been him who had done this?

Bishop smiled at him coldly.

Blinded by his own tears he sank down to his knees, crawling over the planks until he reached the body of his wife and his son. He could barely make out their bodies through the veil of bloody tears which were dripping out of his eyes. Screaming from inner pain he pulled them into his arms, rocking them, shaking them to get them back to life…

But they were dead.

Aidan stared at the corpse onto the bed. The limbs outstretched in a way only the semi-lifeless could.

"No! No! What…what have I done? What have I done?" he stuttered. His eyes were wide with fear, with disbelief and he didn´t notice that Josh, Henry and Donna looked at him in disbelief. He was numb to everything. Numb to the voices that called for him. Numb to the hands of Henry who grabbed for his elbows.

"Aidan! Aidan…what´s going on with you?" Henry fixed Aidan´s eyes, his hands resting on his lower arms and he tried to reach the man/vampire who had claimed him to be his son. The eyes were strangely empty and Aidan´s view seemed to go right through him, without even noticing him.

What the heck?

"Aidan!...AIDAN!" he tried it with more force in his voice.

"I…I have killed you! Oh my God, I have killed you…" Aidan mumbled like from far away.

"You did not kill me! You saved my life! More than once!" Henry urged but when he looked into Aidan´s eyes he realized that he as well could have talked to a wall instead.

What the heck was going on with Aidan? His father in vampire. The ever so strong and straight "Aidan?" He had trusted Aidan with his life irrespective what had happened all over the decades since that fatal day in the fields in 1918 France.

"AIDAN?"

There seemed to be voices around.

The people from the small town they lived in! They were coming for him. Coming to track him down and stake him and bury his ashes within the soil of Massachusetts. God! He had to run away!

Bloody tears were running down his face and he bent down over the corpses.

Bishop grabbed his arms and pulled him up but Aidan struggled to get rid of him.

"Lemme be!" he shouted but the evil grin of Bishop stayed and then his lights went out when anything crashed on his head.

Shaking, rumbling.

Aidan opened his eyes to narrow slits only to find out that he was all tied and lying in a horse drawn buggy.

"What the hell...where are we?", he cursed to the backside of Bishop´s head who sat on the driver´s seat. His face turned to him and his eyes were dark pools.

"What do you think where we are going to?"

"What did you do?" Aidan shouted at him. His head pounding like a crusher.

"We are going to Montreal! We can´t stay at Boston! What do you think? You killed your whole family. Or do you want to burn at the stake for it? But you´re an idiot! Maybe I should have let you there to be caught by the folks. You may deserve it!" Bishop grinned and turned back to the horses, his tongue making a sound to speed up the horses and they followed willingly.

The buggy rumpled over the lane and Aidan fell back into the foot area.

"Aidan?!" Josh barked at him. Anything was definitely wrong with his friend and he was not only afraid for him but for the progress of the ritual.

They had reached now a state of it when the scale pan could bend to one side as well as to the other.

And this damn Reaper was a still lingering danger in the background, lurking from behind, to get hold of the right moment to strike…

_The Reaper roared with enjoyment when he felt that the damn vampire was like butter now in his hands. Only a few steps more and Sally´s soul would be his finally! Right at this moment , with a victory right in sight, he swept aside the fact that he had promised her soul to the Devourer of Souls. He focused onto this trembling heap of a damn bloodsucker, determined to make him his tool of vengeance._

_And it was freaking easy now when he had found exactly the point at which Aidan was at his weakest._

Aidan stood motionless but for the trembling that was slightly shaking his figure. Josh was hesitating if he should leave his position aside the bed. But Donna was still moving into Aidan´s direction.

Aidan stared with blunt eyes at the surroundings, his body still in the bedroom, but his mind was far away. Decades. Centuries. But he was unable to tell anybody, caught into his terrifying memories.

_The Reaper was wildly determined now to take advantage of it. He grabbed deeper into this mind that was an ocean of memories in relation to the dull and almost empty minds of some mortal individuals._

_He felt guilt, deep guilt on him. And guilt was the key to break this bastard._

Aidan gasped. Donna put her hands onto his shoulders, her voice soft in the beginning, then, when it didn´t work on him, her voice became sharper, more intense.

He was holding tight to the dead body of his wife.

He had killed her! He had killed her and her blood was circulating through his body now! He had FED on HER! Her! His beloved wife and the mother of his beloved son, who was lying beside her now. Dead and silent.

Like her.

They were all dead.

And he had killed them all.

And one day one of them will let the cage open because you are their beloved one. And brutally and against your human will, you will kill them all…

OH MY GOD! He had KILLED them! He had given in the animal within him. Had fed the beast within him! He had feasted onto their precious blood like a ravaging animal. Like the predator he had stepped out of war into their peaceful lives. Had taken advantage of their trust into him, the once husband and once father to their family. He, whom they had trusted with their lives. He had fatally betrayed them all, had betrayed…himself when believing he could handle that without ever harming them… OH DEAR GOD! He had failed. Had failed in the eyes of the humankind and in the eyes of God. He was a sinner and never ever would have been forgiven him. Neither by God nor by the humans. And he had killed over and over again…

You murdered those two girls, those two human beings. Under our roof! This sacred place! Yes, he had desecrated their home, the very place they had been safe. Does it stop Aidan? When does it stop? I feel like I´m the only one trying anymore! Josh was about to break into tears and he had been the one to make him cry. Because of him and because of what he did. Like I´m dangling from a cliff by my fingertips and you´re up there stomping on them! Yes, he had stomped on those fingertips that were the only hold to a human life. A human life they both clung to so dearly. I know, I know! Oh my God, Josh! Those two girls…

He had fatally failed.

He was a dark soul. Dark as pitch black. Dark as hell. To burn into the fires of hell.

Unworthy.

Unworthy to perform the ritual.

A sinner wasn´t allowed being a part of the holy circle. Was to be ward off from the inner circle or he would condemn the rising soul down to hell when it would meet the evil force that came from him…

Aidan stumbled backwards, his hands grabbed for his temples and his face was a mask of sheer horror, reflecting his inner turmoil. He was at war with everything; the world around him and his inner self too.

His blackened eyes were widened and he stumbled backwards when Donna tried to follow him.

"Don´t! Don´t touch me! DON´T ever TOUCH ME! I´m a sinner! I´m evil! I´m the living guilt! Stay away from me!" he shouted, his voice trembling.

"Aidan! AIDAN…! You´re mad!" Josh shouted at him and tried to grab his arms but Aidan growled and with rural force pushed him back, so hard that Josh would have fallen on his back if not Henry´s arms caught him in the last moment. When Josh came back onto his feet, supported by Henry, they both stared at Aidan who was crouched now down to the ground.

His hands were pressed over his face and his shoulders were shaking. He was sobbing like a child and bloody tears were dripping down from under his fingers which turned red slowly.

"No blood spilt here! No blood spilt here!" Donna shouted.

Her voice pulled them out of their freezing numbness, everybody but Aidan who was crying, sobbing, his words almost inaudible under his hands.

_The Reaper triumphed._

_Blood was spilt and tears were shed. The vampire had left the circle, had left his position in the magic row and had made the others leaving the magic row._

_The Reaper felt how the shape of Sally, that had been flickering, now was becoming more definitely again. That meant that the force of the ritual which was going to pull her soul out of Limbo, was weakening!_

_That damn witch would fail!_

_And he would keep Sally´s soul in here. It didn´t interest him to the slightest that he had made a deal with Ammit, the devourer of souls. He ignored it that his own soul would be at her disposal if he failed in his attempt._

_The Reaper laughed a roaring laughter that reverberated from the walls of the giant hall of the Limbo._

_His claws went right through Sally´s chest and he grabbed for her heart, the seat of her immortal soul. Sally screamed when she felt how her very life force was pulled from her. A green light shot out of her and a humming sound was in her ears. The light spreading until it was like a circulating wall, an aura, right between them and the Reaper grinned devilish when he felt how he was gaining more and more possession of her soul._

_"__NOW you won´t get away from me! You´re MINE! FOREVER!" His voice as dark and a black stream like smoke from an oil fire came out of his mouth. His fangs white and glistening in difference to it._

"AIDAN! Aidan! Get back into your position!" Donna shouted at him, her hands shaking him wildly as to wake him up from any stupor. She stared into his black eyes, the open mouth with the fangs and the blood that dropped from his cheeks.

"Look! LOOK what is going on!" Josh shouted, his voice trembling and his finger directed to the bed...

Sally´s body was vibrating and a green light was flickering around her. It was stronger and weaker, vibrating like a living thing. It spread over her whole bandaged body until it covered it totally.

Donna´s head shot around and she watched with widened eyes.

The glowing green light was wavering.

Sally´s body seemed to tense and suddenly she/it buckled on the bed. A roaring scream came out of her mouth and the old linen was pulled to pieces. Under the gaping hole teeth were visible, surrounded by half rotten lips.

The scream seemed to break the walls and Josh whirled around, his hands covering his ears. He whimpered with pain and his voice was mixing with that of Henry, who had sunken to the ground, his head bent down and his hands on his ears. How much more must the sounds hurt his preternatural vampire hearing? Henry´s face a mask of pain.

_The Reaper stretched his entity until he could intrude into the bedroom. His mouth turned into a large gaping hole and he bent down onto Sally´s body until he felt her shape fitting around him and he began to suck up her life force. He sucked and the green energy that was Sally´s soul was shrinking, shriveling..._

Donna saw how the green glowing was shriveling and it focused onto her chest, flickering, wavering, moving until it was sucked back into her mouth. The scream turned into a pounding sound and she screamed like burning at a stake. Her whole body went into spasms, shaking wildly like in a seizure of death.

"We are losing her!" Donna screamed over the hellish sounds that were shaking the whole house. The longer this noise level would stay, the more dangerous it would become even for her. She had to have her hands free, could not protect her ears from the disturbing noise and with sheer force she rose her voice over the tormenting pandemonium.

"O Osiris Amenti! I call upon you. Keeper of the gate! Let her cross over! Hear our prayer. Thot, protector of the dead! Beware Sally from the Reaper! Guide her over to us and keep him staying in the realms of Duat!" Donna threw up her arms and turned her hands to the ceiling.

"Go back into your position, AIDAN!" she shouted at him in between.

Aidan stared at her with dull eyes, his body trembling with fear. He didn´t feel it when Henry and Josh jumped to his side and pulled him up, pulling him back to the position he had before anything strange happened to him.

"Stay here, dude!" Josh growled at him and slapped him hard onto the shoulder. Aidan watched him like a being from another star.

"AIDAN!" Josh repeated, shaking him by the shoulders and Aidan didn´t do a thing warding him off. Normally he would ward him off easily and he won´t have allowed even Josh to treat him like this.

_The Reaper was growling with anger. The damn vampire was on the ground but a voice hit him with full force. This damn witch! How could she dare? Her voice was going right into him and it pulled on his deepest structures. Sally was flickering and the green light came out of her mouth in a stream, which was connected with him. He gulped and sucked, making her his straw, when her very life force left her shape and he felt it filling him up with new energy like a puppy thriving on its mother´s milk. Her shape was flickering more and more and her wrapped body was in spasms when she twitched on the shabby bed._

_The Reaper felt Donna´s forceful voice pulling on him. The stream of glowing green light became thinner, more like a fog, but most of it was on his side now. He growled and screamed, his voice going high pitched and forceful, spreading, crossing the dimensional boarder that separated him and Sally´s soul from the bedroom with these ridiculous figures who dared to stand up against him._

_Against HIM!_

_He growled and laughed. A devilish sound that by now would have made the devils of hell shrink back._

_His voice rose to a crescendo…_

… and the humans and the vampires screamed and twitched with pain in the bedroom. The hellish noise made the walls shaking, threatening to burst their hearing by its sheer force.

Henry and Josh sank to their knees and Aidan was staring at the scenario with his eyes nearly bulging out of his skull.

"AIDAN! AIDAN! Stop that!" Henry screamed at him, his own voice strange and hollow in his ears like in a giant empty bucket. His face was pale and torn with pain. Parts of paint were falling from the ceiling and the wallpaper was getting cracks.

Donna´s voice was trembling and with almost no success…almost but not totally…she screamed over the pandemonium…the name of the God Thot.

"THOT. COME. FOR. US! COME FOR the SOUL OF SALLY! Protector of the dead and guidance of the souls in the land of the west! Protect her and us! Protect her from the forces of evil that will taint her Ba, taint her Ka and taint her Sekhem! WE. CALL. UPON YOU, O THOT, AS THE SAVIOR SALLY´S IMMORTAL SOUL !...HEAR US! HEAR OUR PRAYER! AND FIGHT AT OUR SIDE against the forces that will pull the world into darkness!"

With their hands on their ears, Henry and Josh saw how Aidan was wavering under the disturbing attack and then he fell like a felt tree. His black eyes were wide and rolling back into his head.

"NO! NO! Aidan!" Josh screamed and both of them ran to his side.

They reached him at the same time and Josh was stuttering No´s in a row when he felt for the pulse of his friend. With clenched teeth he had taken down one hand to go for the throat, the other hand still on his left ear at least, to protect himself from the noise level.

All chaos broke loose.

_Or call it ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE..._

_The Reaper saw his ground getting harder and he decided to take advantage of the fact that the damn vampire was down on the ground. He focused his preternatural voice onto Aidan, making it forceful but the same time alluring, convincing._

_"__Yes! Yes, you killed them all! You are a killer and you will ever be! You will never reach what you are longing for!"_

_He gave his words time to sink into the vampire´s brain that was a devastated area now. Empty, hollow, free of any hope and would this hope be so ever plain and useless. The attack had been successful and he laughed with enjoyment, now that he was about to win. And it didn´t matter that beside all this the damn witch was going to start her prayers over and over again… She was such a bitchy idiot!_

Aidan´s eyes opened suddenly, but his glance was empty like that of a sick man, awakening from coma. All his fire, his life force seemed to have disappeared with the last crash that had him sent down to the ground. A forceful voice was deep into his conceptive mind now. He had no chance to differ where it came from. Either from the surrounding crescendo he was deaf to, or from anywhere else that definitely wasn´t a place where he had ever been or ever wanted to go to.

He only knew that this voice was filling up his mental emptiness with a resonance that even battered any timbre of a vampire´s compelling voice. It filled him with an unexplainable longing to obey into the voice that told him what to do now. It reached the deepest core of his dark and bleeding soul like that of a father upbraiding his nasty child while comforting it at the same time. Punishment and comfort. Like pain and the thralls of passion combined in sex. And, oh yes! Mixing passion with pain was the thing he so well could cope with.

The voice was that like the sounds of blood, the red cloud that filled him to his deepest core when he was drinking. The sound of the heart beat, strong once and then fading. The unbearable power over life and death of a donor, if willing or if forced into obedience by compelling her. Up to lose himself into it, so totally he was up to lose control as usually.

Now he was going to lose himself totally into this voice that told him to rise and to move…

_"__You´re a killer, Aidan and you´re a sinner in front of your God, belonging to hell where I´ll take over your soul, Aidan. The blood of your wife and your son are crying upwards to heaven! The gates of heaven are locked up for thou and thou to find no shelter in the realms of God!" The Reaper waited for his words to work into Aidan´s disastrous and desperate soul. His evil grin would have made devils flee but to the vampire it looked like mercy._

_"__But I can give you shelter, Aidan…the only shelter you will ever find. I´m the merciful Reaper and I´m going to give you relief from all turmoil!" His voice had come down to a whisper and it sounded all promising, all comforting. Giving him the relief he was searching for since the very day he had been turned in the 1770s battlefield by Bishop, his maker. Relief from eternal hunger, relief from eternal guilt and failure over and over again._

_"__It takes not much and I´ll help you with it, Aidan!" The voice a promise…tempting and irresistible._

"What shall I do? What…will I have to do?" Aidan whispered out of nothing seemingly.

_"__Rise, Aidan. Rise and deliver yourself to eternal relief. Rise and all turmoil will fall away from you! I´m your only way to mercy, your only way to the havens of heaven you so dearly clung to since the days of your innocent childhood! But you tainted your very soul that was given to you from God…!"_

Aidan stared with empty eyes into the room. Not aware that Josh and Henry were watching him in disbelief.

"Aidan?" Josh tried to reach his friend anyway. He had seen Aidan in different moods, from funny to depressed or full of guilt. But now Aidan´s look was so strange, so different from all he knew from his friend and roommate. He looked as if he was totally disconnected from reality, like he had gone to another world...

"Aidan? Aidan...wake up!" Josh´s voice grew louder.

"Go...go and deliver your very soul to salvation! Rise, Aidan and drop the yoke of all earthly torment..." The voice of the Reaper was alluring.

Josh looked at Aidan and Henry was crouched beside him. He waited for Aidan to give any reaction. But Aidan seemed to be far, far away. His body was in this dimension, but his mind was floating anywhere.

Had they lost Aidan to the thralls of madness or to another dimension?

"Aidan! Don´t do this...!" Josh began.

Suddenly Aidan rose from the ground, his fangs bared, his eyes bled black. He moved with vampire speed, growling and hissing. His arm came up and with brutal force he swept Josh aside and he fell to the ground, his head hitting the planks. Aidan whirled around, his mouth open and before any of the others could do anything, Aidan jumped over to the place where the chair stood.

Aidan smashed the chair against the wall and with a loud crack the wood broke and he grabbed one of the broken legs.

"Stop him! Stop him!" Josh and Donna were shouting in unison.

"He´s gonna stake anyb..." Josh screamed.

Aidan grabbed the leg with the split and sharp tip, turned it around and both his hands clung to it.

"NO! NO AIDAN!" Josh screamed full of fear when he suddenly realized what Aidan was going to do. He jumped forward, stumbling over his own feet in his panic...

Aidan´s arms moved upwards and the tip of the chair leg was hovering in the air for seconds before he would bring it down in a deathly bow...

...to his OWN heart!

"NO!" Josh and Henry screamed, moving. The vampire Henry was way faster.

_"__Yes! Yes! Do it Aidan and fulfill the circle finally!" the Reaper shouted at him, his face, his former face a mask of evil hatred. He roared with joy._

_He would be the winner. Finally! The vampire failed and Sally´s soul would be HIS forever..._

The arms moved down and Aidan smiled in contemplation of his death.

"Look! This sinner dies for you...!" Aidan brought out when his arms rushed down.

The chair leg rushed down and the tip seemed to disappear into his chest...

Josh felt like moving in lead instead of air. Seconds stretched into an eternity. The time would never be enough to get to him before the stake would pierce right through his heart. Josh jumped, more sailing than moving, his body flying like when he jumped through the woods in wolf state.

_The Reaper roared with enjoyment. An unearthly laughing._

With a sound, so unreal in the sudden silence, a crackling, anything was smashed into a far corner. It took Josh a moment to realize that the sound was made by a falling piece of wood that was smashed aside by Henry who was slithering over the ground before he managed it to stop and stabilize again , preventing himself from crashing into the wall under the window.

A desperate scream let the walls shake.

It came out of Aidan´s mouth who sank down onto his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks and he sank down to a heap of misery on the rug, sobbing and crying.

_The Reaper cracked with fury. His shape shot forward and his claws were stretched out against Sally when he tried to reach her, ready to destroy her finally._

_But Sally wasn´t willing to die finally._

_She moved..._

Sally was in spasms or more definitely; her body was. Because no one, even not Donna, knew if she was back among them or if her soul was still trapped into the Limbo. Screams and growls were coming out of her mouth and her upper body rose from the plastic foil covered bed. The linen over her cheeks and mouth was torn and a stream of screams and animal like sounds came out of the gaping hole.

Fortunately it was impossible to understand WHAT she was screaming. Despite the sound level it was totally inscrutable.

Josh was glad for it.

The scenario reminded him of nothing less than _The Exorcist_.

And he had no doubt that exactly this was happening right here and right now. His worst doubts about what would happen when Donna dared to call upon an ancient deity, seemed to become true.

Donna´s voice was thundering above the crescendo. Her face was an iron mask and when Henry and Josh bent over Aidan who was wincing on the ground, his pupils fixed, his breath, if there had ever been any, almost not to feel.

"THOT! God of the dead and guidance over the souls to cross the threshold! We need your help. Listen to our prayer and keep Sally under your protection! Here is lying Sally, the wife of her husband and she wants to cross over! Save her from the forces of darkness and accompany her soul back into our World! For this, o Thot, we are praying to you. Hear our begging and give the mercy, for the great god Osiris has given her back her limbs and her voice and her mouth!"

_"__Thot. THOT!" The words, the name which was sharp as a blade, a sword, was pounding in the Reapers ears, his whole entity. He growled, his arms stretching out like claws when he tried to reach either one of this idiotic humans or Sally in general. His mouth was a gaping hole and black fog, whirling like a twister, came out of it. Shockwaves of his enraged screams made it wavering and then he shot forward._

Donna rose her hands, the Gimel in her right hand, and she was stretching her arms against an invisible enemy of which the humans and vampires were sure to be here. The air was vibrating with the pandemonium and parts of color and dust from everywhere were whirling around…

"Thot! We call upon you! Help us! Help Sally whose body is lying here, waiting for her Ka, her Ba , her Sekhem to be reunited in her Khat…!"

_The Reaper screamed and twitched when the red glowing light was split and the green light of Sally´s soul was hanging in the center of the Limbo. He stared with bulging eyes at the shape that manifested itself out of the red fog, splitting it like with a sword._

_When the thing came nearer its shape stabilized more and more and a slim figure became visible, the shape of a slender human with the slim head of an Ibis. Its pecker long and thin like a dagger, with a sharp tip._

_Thot moved with rising speed, shooting straight forward, going right into attack._

_The God of the dead was flying on invisible wings, his arms spread out to his sides and then he bent his head with the deadly pecker. The Reaper shot forward to push him back with his pure will but he failed when the pecker went right into the place, where a human had his heart. The sharp tip went right through his chest, nailing him to the wall behind._

_The Reaper screamed with pain when the pecker pierced not only his heart area but the long thin thing was like an iron poker, glowing orange like lava. So hot it burned right through the Reaper and when Thot whirled around his head, the shape of the Reaper was thrown against the far wall of the Limbo._

_All this happened without so much as a word from Thot whereas the words which came out of the mouth of his opponent were a stream of foul stench and darkness…_

"O Thot! Ward him off! Save the Akh of Sally so that the demon of darkness has no power over her! We pray for your guidance, your mercy and your protection! Thot! Save her from the realms of darkness and send her Akh, her Ba, her Kha and her Sahu back to live with Sekhem in imperishable unity!"

_The words of the witch were powerful enough to weaken him and Thot was hovering above him, his pecker open like a double edged blade. The ancient god of the dead was staring at him when the shape of the Reaper became uneven und began to flicker and it seemed to dissolve more and more._

_"__YOU…CAN´T…GEEEETTT herrrrrrrrrrrr free!" The Reaper shouted, his shape wavering with wrath when he tried to stabilize himself against the combined force of the god Thot and the witch._

_The precious Akh of Sally was hovering among them and her shape moved forward, her face a mask of hatred and her fingers claws when the holy words of the witch pulled her forward. Her shape became more and more steady…_

Donna was standing beside the bed that was now utterly silent, now that the soul of Sally or her very life force had been sucked back into the Limbo.

Josh and Henry were supporting Aidan, holding him back and fixing him to his position. His eyes were narrow slits, his cheeks stained with his bloody tears and he was trembling like a leaf in the wind.

"Le…mme be! Go away….please…" he whimpered but both, his friend and his son, were persistent; "I´m a sinner! A sinner…Unworthy! Unworthy…unworthy…" he stuttered repeatedly.

"Shut up, Aidan! You´re not unworthy! NOT! GET IT!" Josh shot at him while he tried to comfort his vampire friend. His look went to the bed where Donna was praying with all her power of will. The body of Sally was lying motionless on the covers and all life seemed to have her left now. The slight movements from before, when Donna had called upon her limbs, were totally subsided and Sally looked so dead like her corpse when they had dug her up from her grave.

Josh looked at Donna, caught her look and attention for a short moment;

"That won´t do! _We have lost her_, Donna…" he whispered with a trembling and nearly inaudible voice.

She shot him such an enraged glare that he twitched under it.

"WE. Don´t. Have. Lost HER!" she shouted at him.

Determination was in her voice, her mind and her very being.

Against all forces of hell and heaven…she won´t give up right now that she felt the God Thot approaching…

Her face became stone when she went on with the ancient prayers.

Josh and Henry watched her in horror when her hands were moving up to the ceiling. She stroked through the air with her Gimel, her voice falling into a singing. They couldn´t understand what she was singing because it was the old ancient Egyptian language. Out of the corner of his eye Henry saw her moving around, singing and praying again.

He was crouched beside Aidan, his fingers wet with the bloody tears of his father, who was a shivering heap of misery in the very moment. Aidan would be of no use for the ritual now and Henry had strong doubts about any success they would have now after all what had happened. He couldn´t get him up on his feet, the less put him back onto the position Donna had ordered him before. Henry couldn´t imagine that they would get Sally´s soul back yet because the circle was broken. Aidan was in no condition to go on and all Henry knew about the ritual´s success; it depended on a complete circle or team like Donna had explained before they had started all of this. Henry wasn´t the one to give up so easily but Aidan was definitely out of the track. So he watched as Donna went on unflinching. Either she simply hadn´t give up hope or she had an ace up her sleeve he didn´t know of.

_The green glowing cloud of Sally´s Akh was amidst the giant hall and when Sally heard the command to move from Thot and from a woman, she took a gasping breath and against all odds and against the screaming that came from the Reaper, she started to move._

_"__NO! NO! Don´t leee…tttt herrr….ge..geee…to….it! NO….NO…Shers MINE! MINE!" the reaper screamed while his shape became more and more uncertain, his voice high pitched and torn._

_Sally felt attracted by the pulling and powerful voice that had managed it to reach her. The god Thot was hovering in front of the Reaper, his bird head with the pecker bent down to the Reaper like a living lance, holding him at bay. When the Reaper tried to move despite the threat above him, the voice of Thot thundered through the Limbo._

_"__Dare you, Reaper and I´ll sent you into eternal perdition! Ammit is waiting for your soul! You betrayed her and you ever went to know that Ammit won´t let you run?" Thot turned over to Sally who was lurking from behind a giant pillar. Her face showing her fear in view of the all powerful God Thot._

_"__Sally Malik, faithful wife of your husband...I order you to go!"_

_Sally looked at him in astonishment. She more floated than walked nearer to the place where the Reaper was a flickering thing, hissing, growling but helpless under the strong spell of Thot that fixed his fading shape to the ground. Pecker and wings of the god were stretched out against him and he growled and gnarled when he felt his own structure melt and fade under the words that came from the witch and the powerful force that emanated from Thot. In fury he stared at Sally who moved nearer, now that she felt the protecting power of Thot that stood in between her and her worst enemy._

_"__I will fe...ed on yourrrr...s...oul...SA...LLY and you will be MINE...MINE...MINE!" The Reaper hissed with a voice full of hatred. She had betrayed him, she had condemned him back into Limbo and when she would return to the world of the living, he would finally be stuck in here forever._

_"__You...YOU can´t ever harm me again, Reaper! You and your false promises you gave me! I never asked you for being YOU! But you put force on me to make a choice that never had been a choice!" Sally hissed and her face changed the color from the pale white tone to a vivid grey, her eyes turning into white balls without anything like a pupil. Her appearance becoming monstrous and her voice turned into a dark and hollow sound when she spoke._

_"__You belong to HELL, Reaper! Where you came from! And I will greet the goddess Ammit when she comes to devour your soul! You are a ruthless killer and you have ever been! There´s no such thing as BALANCE!"_

_Sally turned over to Thot again and when he nodded, she went on:_

_"__I have failed! Failed under the spell of the killer demon...!"_

_"__I don´t accuse you for murder, Sally. Ma`at did weigh your heart on the Scale of Truth and her holy feather told; you heart is lightweight! So you´re free to live in the realms of the dead, the land Duat, as well as to live in the realm sof the living...So make your choice, Sally Malik, daughter of the king!" Thot said._

_When the Reaper heard his words he screamed with fury, tried to escape the power that nailed him to the ground. He struggeled but his shape was weakening and flickering and the more he fought the less control he had over it. His shape, his former ghostly body became unsteady and flimsy and his screams rose when he felt it fading. A dark cloud spread out from the place where a human had a heart and he felt his energy, his very life force drifting away from him until it hung amidst air like a whirling twister cloud. A dark humming sound filled the giant hall and Sally floated backwards to bring distance between her and this all over dark energy._

_Thot turned around and his right hand was swinging around, directing to the other side of the Limbo where a giant door with double wings opened. A red glowing light filled the space and out of the vibrating light stepped a dark figure. IT stepped towards the three entities..._

Josh and Henry stared at the corpse on the bed.

The screams that had come out of the dark opening of her mouth now subsided to an nearly inaudible mumbling. Even Henry wasn´t able to differ them despite his vampire hearing skills.

"What...? What´s going on here?" Josh brought out with his voice going an octave higher and almost tumbling over. He felt for his head with a moan and when he brought his shaking fingers in front of his eyes, he let out a breath of relief when he found them free of blood.

"I don´t have the slightest imagination..." Henry whispered.

He had taken hold of Aidan, his arms wrapped around the shoulders of the man who called him to be his son. When Henry tilted his head to one side, so that he could look into Aidan´s eyes, he found him more receptive. A bit of life had returned into them and the strange, trance like distance had gone.

"Uuh, my head...please tell me anybody...there´s a goddamn cement mixer running anywhere outside...", Josh groaned.

"I´m afraid there´s nothing under construction outside...seems to be your head, Josh. I´m sorry... Henry whispered.

"Shut up!" Donna ordered them angrily, her hand waving into their direction. A rude gesture to make them stop whispering. Conscious of guilt they looked at her like children caught on something forbidden.

Donna nodded and went on. She bent over the corpse that was slightly vibrating and mumbling. Ignoring this terrifying facts in relation to a dead body...but what was anyway still normal here now?

Her hand with the Gimel moved midair over the corpse.

"Oh my Mother Nut, spread thyself over me, that thou mayest place me amongst the Imperishable stars, which are in thee, and I die not again..." Her Gimel went upwards, directing to invisible stars. The humming sound became louder.

"Djed, rise up as the perfect soul in the underworld Amtuat. Sally, enter into the realms of the dead, eat the food of Osiris, and be justified...!"

_"__So I´m free to move? I´m free from guilt?" Sally asked Thot fearfully._

_The Ibis-headed god nodded confirming._

_"__Ma´at found you to be lightweight! So you´re free to go to Amtuat or to the gates of the east, where Re resides over the day in the world of the living! You´re justified, Sally Malik! Your souls are free to move wherever they want."_

_"__I wish so much to be with my friends again..." Sally felt a wave of happiness running through her. A happiness she had missed to feel since an eternity. Since she had shredded herself into Limbo in an attempt to escape the damn Reaper. This demon had been in her head, his voice tormenting her over and over again, irrespective how hard she had tried to make things go right. Irrespective how hard she tried to fulfill his task, his orders. Irrespective how much ghosts she shredded; it never had been right enough..._

_He had tricked her into becoming a condemned soul, had prepared her downfall to hell finally, sucking up her Akh and improving his life force with her own. He was a traitor- no balancer!_

_She had failed. Failed with believing into him and his words. She had failed by falling prey to this demon... Shredding herself into the Limbo was because of feeling guilty and in an attempt to flee from him. But she had taken him with her, connected to him fatally. And she had been going to pay for it..._

"O Osiris, King, I give you the eye of Horus. May be your face imbued with it. The eye of Horus is spread over you in incense and fire... Wadj and Sa and Thet and Urs (*youth, protection, salvation, headrest) shall be given to thou. Thou art lift up, o sick one that lies prostrate. Thy lift up thy head to the horizon...thou art rised up...thy head shall never, never be carried away from thee..."

Josh and Henry watched terrified and with rising horror how the corpse groaned and moved and the head and then the upper body sat up until Sally´s body was sitting on the bed...

_Sally shivered and lifted herself up into the air, then she felt her body pulled into a sitting position by the voice that came from far away. Behind her she heard claws scratching over the ground an stomping feet. When the noises came nearer, the Reaper began to scream but a simply move of Thot´s hand condemned him to silence. His face and mouth a caricature of a soundless scream, like a painting fixed for eternity._

_Sally was hovering in the air, sitting like a floating yogi. It looked strange, herself being uncoupled from the ground._

"I call upon you, Ba, the corporeal soul to manifest as a wholly corporeal falcon! I call upon Ka, your celestial soul to manifest as the human headed hawk! Thou enter as a hawk and come fort as Bennu at dawn!"

_The hovering green glowing cloud of Sally´s soul, a compound of all her manifestations, began to waver and moved in the direction where Sally stood. It spread and shrunk and spread again like a breathing, living thing. The very life force what it really was._

Josh and Henry shrieked, both their heart beats speeding up and Josh felt like his heart was going into overdrive, jumping out of this throat any moment, when suddenly Sally´s whole body was bathed in an unearthly green light, covering her like a cloud of glowing green.

Josh stumbled backwards, his hands pressed over his mouth, gasping, his eyes widened with disbelief.

That wasn´t what he had imagined it to be...

Henry stared at the unreal scenario. He couldn´t move, holding Aidan in his arms like a protecting angel.

"What...what..what..." he mumbled almost soundless. His eyes fixed on the corpse that seemed to become kind of translucent in this unearthly light that filled the whole room, even seemed to go right through all of them. Henry´s mind found no other relation than an other-worldly x-ray scan.

"I totally messed it up! I did snafu it in whole..." Aidan whimpered and tears streamed down his cheeks again, when he lifted his face, irritated by the flickering green.

It´s my mess and now Sally is gonna die. Cuz of me. ME!"

Henry felt his shoulders shiver under the sobs.

Over all this Donna´s voice pounded in their ears.

"Make Sally´s Ab (*heart) beat! Thou shall understand with thy heart. Thou shall gain mastery over thy heart, thou shall gain mastery over thy two hands, thou shall gain mastery over thy legs. I shall have power to do whatsoever my Ka pleaseth. My Ba shall not be fettered to my body at the gates of Amtuat, but I shall cross over and come forth in peace"

The humming sound became a pounding one and Josh shivered when he became aware that the pounding was that of a heart that filled his hearing like when he had done blood pressure measurement in the hospital.

"Is...is that...I mean does...does her...heart beat! Ya know that´s...that´s impossible...A mean, it´s..she is DEAD!" Josh uttered and the rhythmic sound seemed to reverberate in his own chest, seemed to take up his own heart´s rhythm...

That couldn´t all be real...

He was...he was dreaming. A mad and disturbing dream like these ones Aidan must have had in the darkness of his grave. He would wake up at any moment...

Can please, please anybody wake me up from this nightmare? He begged feverishly in his mind. He bit his knuckles in excitement and tension, didn´t feel the pain his teeth let grew in the sensitive flesh.

"May nothing oppose me in the judgment in the presence of the Lord of the Trial: Osiris. Let it said of me, of what I have done: `Her deeds are right and true´. May nothing be presented against me in the presence of the great god Osiris. May Ankh be presented by the gods to both the living and the dead...!" Donna prayed for Sally who was sitting upright on the bed. The green glowing was vibrating around her in the rhythm of the heart beats.

Osiris stepped forward to Sally and his voice rose.

"Your deeds are right and true, Sally Malik. You are to cross over with your Ankh...We giveth thou back your Ba, Ka and Sekhem. You are free to see your friends you so want..."

Osiris stretched out his arm towards the gate of the Limbo, directed her to walk.

Sally breathed and the glowing green closed around her and then the light went into her chest like a cloud sucked up by the whirling winds. Sally felt it going right into her and a forceful power filled her whole being when the compound of her corporeal and her celestial and her immortal soul reunited into her. Life force Ankh filled her very existence.

When she passed Osiris and looked up into his face she saw tears shed which dripped down his golden cheeks and they were glistening in the golden light like little crystals. When they hit the ground they turned into white crystals looking like shimmering pearls.

_The salt of the seas is made from the fallen tears of the angels! _ Once her mother had told her when she had been a child.

Or from the tears shed by the Gods.

And Sally walked.

She walked and passed by the fading entity of the Reaper who stared at her in pure disbelief. And now that Thot allowed his voice to be heard again, he screamed in desperation;

"What will be MY freedom? What will I gain back from you?"

"You will be condemned, Reaper! For you have betrayed her very soul to become like you. Ma´at has weighed your soul and found it to be heavier than the Holy Feather of her head! You... Reaper! You are given over to Ammit, the Devourer of Souls! She will feed and thrive onto your dark soul and you will be condemned to eternal restlessness! That´s your regaining...!" Thot thundered.

Sally walked by, passing the Reaper.

His desperation and hatred would have been enough to satisfy her finally, but she was distracted by two shapes that were lurking from aside. When she came nearer to the gate, she recognized them. Both men.

Stevie and Nick.

They looked so sad it pushed a stake through her heart. Sally stopped where they stood and turned to them.

"Stevie. Nick..."

The man and the boy turned in on her and Stevie began to sob when he became aware that Sally was about to leave and to let them back to be stuck into Limbo.

"You have condemned us to Limbo, Sally..." he complained with his young voice. There was no hatred, only a great sadness. "I didn´t kill, Sally! Show mercy on us! Don´t let us back in here! For the reason of Justice and for my friend Nick!" he whimpered.

Sally stopped and she hugged him and Nick, their life force touching each other.

She turned over to the God Osiris.

"Is there a way back for them?" she dared to ask now that the gods had forgiven her and her soul was clean and shining bright.

Osiris nodded yes.

"Then I´ll promise you...I´ll find a way to bring you back into the world of the living. It was my fault that you have been stuck in here. And so it´s me to get you out of here again. Both! I promise by the life of my very soul!"

"You have to go now, Sally Malik!" Osiris ordered and by a slight move of his hands the gate opened.

Sally waved Stevie and Nick a last good bye, than she...

...entered the world of the living.

The body on the bed moved and fought and the green light was sucked up into her chest.

Sally groaned when her bandaged body fought to get rid of the linen manacles in which she had been wraped when she was buried the traditional way of the Near East.

"OH MY GOD! OH MY DEAR GOD...!" Josh shouted when he saw how the wrapped body on the bed fought and moved and fought for his freedom. He jumped to the side of the bed, willing to get her free but his heart was pounding with fear at the thought to unwrap a half rotten and now moving body.

Donna pushed him aside and began to unwrap the bandages.

"Help me! I can´t get that all alone!" she shouted at Henry and Josh, getting them out of their freezing.

Henry leaned Aidan back to the floor and ran to her side. Josh made himself move by his sheer will, his fingers shaking when he accompanied the vampire and the witch.

Together the managed it to unwrap the body that did writhe onto the sheets.

Finally the last layer fell and under it...

...Sally´s body, naked as she had been, appeared...

The very moment she was finally set free, her ghostly body jumped from the remains and in less than a second she stood amidst the room.

She was shivering with excitement when a ghost could shiver.

Josh stared at her in disbelief.

"Sally...Sally is that you? Uh...mean...I don´t...I mean...I can´t...I...Oh my dear God! Is that really you, Sally? Uh mean...no...no..." He blushed, cringed, uttered; "...a Zombie."

"NO! No! What do you think, Josh!" Sally shouted at him angrily. "I´m a ghost! None of these creepy crawling creatures! Knacker´s yard on two legs or stomach...! JOSH! Get you compound together! I´ T! Ghost! Do you want to insult me the very moment I´m back to those I think to be my friends?"

"No! No, of course not, Sally...I only mean...Oh my God...I simply can´t believe all that crap! I´m a medical person...a nurse, no ghost-finder...!" Josh sank to the ground with a gasp.

Josh was sitting on his butt, his hands pressed to the ground beside his body, stabilizing his still slightly shivering form. A rustling sound was coming from anywhere behind him and Josh turned his head into the direction. What he saw was nothing better than him.

A slowly crawling Aidan was moving nearer. His face was stained with his bloody tears that had dried now. He looked strangely weak despite the fact that he had drunken a large amount of blood since his own rescue. At the foot-end of the bed he grabbed the wood to pull himself upright.

Suddenly he felt hands under his arms, supporting him from behind. Aidan turned his head, expecting it to be Henry. But his eyes widened in disbelief when he found out that it was Sally who helped him up onto his feet.

"How...how...I mean...how can you...? Why do I feel you? Sally?" Aidan stuttered and his dark eyes under the long lashes showed his disbelief. He had seen sally manage a strawberry and a newspaper, but pulling him up...

"What...what happened to you, Sally..." He was near to tears again, when he felt terribly ashamed that he had been so weak. Painfully Donna´s words came to his mind; Everybody has his weaknesses when he lives so long...

His weakness nearly had ruined it all and he felt a burning pain in his heart, like a hot flame. He was guilty and he had failed.

But was anybody to forgive him?

Anytime?

"You...all of you...have cried...for me...I...I never have felt such...love...maybe that´s it what brought me back, Aidan..."

Sally bent forward and kissed his lips.

Aidan felt her lips as if they were living ones. Henry and Josh moved in and he pulled them into a tight hug...

_**The End **_


End file.
